Relief Printmaking Wood Choices

Video Transcript

"The possibilities are really endless for what subject matter and how you want to carve the block, and how you want to use the block of wood for carving. It really is going to be dependent on how you work with the wood and what you're want to get from that piece of wood. Here are three blocks of wood, each of these are on a different kind of wood. Both of these are sheen applied. This is three ply and five ply. Here is an industrial piece of plywood that was available to me, and I carved it. Here is in that print where I get some more of the rougher carve marks around the edges. And they each are showing something, a different way to get imagery out of the wood. Where here's going to be a more of a blanket area of raised wood that's going to give me one solid image. Here I'm getting a more draftsmanship quality where I was really trying to emulate my drawing, my rapid drawing of my pencil. And try to get that into the wood. How you are going to carve your block of wood, what subject matter you're going to bring to it is really going to depend on what you want to say. It may take a little bit of time for you to get a handle on how to translate what it is you want to say into the block of wood. But that's part of the beauty of learning about relief printmaking and learning about wood."