Contemporary Woodcut Workshops

I delivered a woodcut course earlier this year, at Sussex Printmaking Studio, spread over 5 weeks between January and March 2011. We looked at the basics of woodblock printing and then explored the use of colour and grain. I would like to thank Geoffrey Plant, Pernille Harari, Belinda Chavasse and Michael Kalkbrenner for attending these workshops, it was great working with them. I will be doing another course in the summer, Discovering Relief, where we will look at all the possibilities within relief printing, experimenting with materials and plate-making. The dates for this course need to be confirmed, and I will post them as soon as they are.

Contemporary Woodcut Workshops was divided into three phases:

BASICS
During the first few sessions I introduced them into the technique, how to transfer the image on to the block, how to use the different carving tools, and how to approach image-making in relief printing. I showed them examples of artists using single block printing in black, and they worked on small blocks of soft wood, printing with black ink onto paper. Then we introduced colour by using coloured paper, applying watercolour, acryllic, computer printed images, and colour paper.

Some modern and contemporary artists we looked at for reference were (in order) Emma Stibbon, M. C. Escher, Uriel Marin and Paul Gauguin:

Printing exclusively with black ink is limiting, but can produce great results, and can make it easier to tackle relief printing for the first time, and to think about graphic language, mark making and the relationship between black and white in different areas of the print. These are examples of the work they produced:

 Belinda Chavasse

 Geoffrey Plant

 Geoffrey Plant

 

 Michael Kalkbrenner

Michael Kalkbrenner

 

 Michael Kalkbrenner

 

Michael Kalkbrenner

 

 

COLOUR

We experimented with using colour whilst still printing with one plate only, employing different methods to put the ink onto the surface of the plate. We looked at different artist's use of colour, such as Mabel Hewit's white-line technique, or Uriel Marin's blending of different colours on the same roller:

 

 

  

 

Here are some examples of the prints done at the workshop using colour on a single plate:

 

 

 Belinda Chavasse

 

 Geoffrey Plant

 

 Geoffrey Plant

 

 Geoffrey Plant

 

 Michael Kalkbrenner

 

 Pernille Harari

 



Pernille Harari

 

 

 

GRAIN

Finally we discovered how to incorporate the grain of the woodblock into the image, looking at different types of wood and examples from artists for inspiration. Brian Nash Gill makes amazing prints from the cross section of trees, Edvard Much printed a lovely Kiss with a grainy block and  Merlyn Chesterman is a British contemporary printmaker who often employs the grain of the wood in her practice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Towards the end of the course, the students worked on bigger blocks, choosing the type of wood they wanted to use according to its grain, and incorporating what they had learned throughout the course.

 

 





 Michael Kalkbrenner

 

 Michael Kalkbrenner

 

Belinda Chavasse