Relief Printmaking Brayer Techniques

Video Transcript

"To show printing the block of wood, I've taken a block of wood that I've already carved. And, one of the reasons why I chose this one is because there are large areas that have carved away and then there's also large amount of areas of solid wood that's still remaining on the block. It gives you an idea of how those different areas are going to be effected when printing. So, now that I have mixed my ink on my pallet I'm going to use my brayer again to get that nice sheet of ink to roll onto my block of wood. Now, getting the hang of the brayer and getting that nice layer of ink on there does take some time. So, don't be discouraged if at first it doesn't come as easily as you would like. Now, as I'm inking the block of wood you can see here that the areas in between the raised parts the carve marks they are picking up little bits of ink. Now, one of the things if you are planning to edition your block of wood is regulating which carve marks pick up ink each time is difficult. I'm not going to worry about that right now. I'm just going to worry about getting a nice clean layer of ink on my block. And, one of the things I was talking about was a carving shelf. And, the reason is that my brayer is going to seek the tallest part of any area that I am rolling it onto. So, right here even though all of this is carved if I was to put my brayer right there it's going to pick up all of those carve marks. So, if I want to minimize the number of carve marks that are being picked up with my brayer I'm going to want to keep my brayer as much on the surface of the block of wood that I haven't carved away as possible so that I can make sure that this brayer is staying on that surface that I chose to keep."