Relief Printmaking Mistakes

Video Transcript

"Once I have transfered my image to my block, I'm now going to start carving. And although I have already have some carve marks in my block, I'm going to try to use them to incorporate into my design. For me this is one of the really exciting elements of wood cut printing making. I mean, certainly, once you carve away pieces of wood, you cannot erase them. Therefore, if you make a mistake, if your tool jumps, and you make a line that you didn't mean to, the best way to keep your block working for you, is to incorporate that mistake into your image. I think that in many cases those little bits of mistakes can sometimes really teach you things about the block of wood and about your images that you wouldn't necessarily have gotten otherwise, and can be a blessing. However, if there ever is a mark that you have made that you desperately want to get rid of, you can use a wood filler and fill it in, but I suggest that you attempt to use that mark and make it part of your image, as I'm about to do here. So I have transfered my bird image onto my block of wood. And because I have all these extraneous carve marks here, I've decided that I'm going to carve away much of the block, and leave the lines from my original drawing of the bird, the raised surface. Now before I do start carving, I am going to think about how it will print. And in order to have a nice printing surface, I want to leave a little bit of edge around my block of wood, to give a place for the brayer to sit on."