Making It Ep.4: Block Printing

Hello, my darling patrons and friends, and welcome to the fourth episode of the Making It monthly series, where I take you step-by-step through how I make important pieces of my freelance art business. 

Throughout the series I’ll be sharing how I make my handmade earrings, enamel pins, custom portraits, process videos, stickers, product photography, and more, so you can be empowered to try making a new product or adding new techniques to your own process. 

For this fourth episode, I’ll be sharing my process for making Block Prints!

According to BLICK Art: “Block (or relief) printing is a process that involves carving into linoleum, wood, foam, or another carving material and printing an impression of the carved surface onto paper, textiles, and more.”

Relief printing is perhaps humanity’s oldest printing method, with round “cylinder seals” used to roll images into clay found dating before 3000 B.C. from Mesopotamia, and Han Dynasty woodblock printed fabrics found from as early as 220 AD. It’s not only ancient, but also a very accessible form of printing. If you ever cut a potato or apple into a shape and stamped it on paper as a kid, then you’ve made a block print!

I got into block printing in 2019, because I wanted to be able to make my own printed shirts and tote bags without the space or technicality necessary for home screen printing. Any experienced printmakers can probably see that I’m pretty new to block printing, don’t have all the tools and techniques, and am definitely not a perfectionist here. But what I love about block printing is the unexpected texture and personality that you don’t get with digital printing. And of course I’m always of the firm belief that  nobody should wait until they have all the perfect tools and techniques before they get started with any medium.

So let’s take off our Perfection Capes and set them aside for now, grab some tools, and let’s experiment with this ancient printing technique.

Let’s get to making a block print!

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S  U  P  P  L  I  E  S

1. Ink - I use Speedball block printing ink, but feel free to use whatever you can find at your local art supply store!
2. Paper - My favorite paper for block printing is a 100 lb. vellum surface Bristol. Take a few different types of paper and test a print to see which you like the best. 
3. Carving Material - Thus far I’ve used Speedball pink Speedy Carve in a few different sizes. They’re affordable and very easy to carve, which seems to make them more prone to chunky, imprecise shapes. Mounted linoleum is another option for carving. The linoleum is harder to carve, but allows for sharper, more defined prints. You can even block print with stuff around your house! 
4. Carving Tools - I use the Speedball Linoleum Cutter set. If you’ve never used linoleum cutters, they are VERY SHARP so use extreme caution with them. 
5. Transfer Tools- I use a simple graphite pencil, but you can also use a laser printer or transfer paper if you have it. Or just draw directly onto your block.
6. Your design to be printed!
7. Inking Plate - I use a piece of glass from a thrifted picture frame, which is probably dangerous. You can also use a piece of plexiglass, or buy a fancy inking plate when you buy your other tools.
8. Rag/Washcloth - to clean your hands between prints, because the mess can start to add up.
9. Artist Tape - to secure art while transferring, or to provide a guide for printing.
10. Brayer - A roller tool for applying ink to your block. I use a Speedball soft rubber brayer. If you’re really just experimenting and don’t want to get into all the tools, you can also use a sponge or a big ink pad to apply your ink.
11. Baren - (Not pictured) A tool to press your paper or printing surface to your block. I don’t have a real baren, and I usually use a flat-bottomed jar or big spoon. 

D  R  A  W

We need an image to block print! You can design a totally new piece, or use one you already have.
I wanted to make a cat print that would look nice on a shirt and on a paper print, but after making some shirt designs I realized I only had 4x6” block prints and changed my plans haha.

I sketched and illustrated my design in Procreate, but you can also work traditionally, or hell, just draw directly on the block if you’re a confident monster!

I‘m fairly new to block printing so I generally try to work with simple shapes and designs, without too many small details. Research images of linocuts, woodblock prints, and block printing in general to get a sense of how people have used the medium. Lots of textures, shading, and different looks are possible as your skill grows.

I chose this double cat design because I like the interesting play on the subtractive process of block printing and the details weren’t too small to be viable for a 4x6” carving.

T R A N S F E R

There’s a couple different options for transferring your art:

• Graphite Transfer - Print your image to scale and grab a graphite pencil. I honestly couldn’t remember the exact way to do this so you can see above two techniques.
  For the top technique I rubbed graphite all over my design, then flipped onto my block and redrew the image, pressing the graphite into the paper. Obviously it came out very smudged and imprecise.
  For the bottom technique I did the opposite: drew graphite only on part of the image that I wanted transferred. I placed the paper graphite side down on my block and rubbed the paper until the image was transferred.
• Graphite Transfer Paper - A similar technique but skipping the graphite rubbing, place a piece of graphite paper between your art and the block (graphite side down), and trace your design.
• Laser Print Transfer - A very precise, crisp transfer if you have a laser printer and acrylic gel medium. Check out this great blog post for this technique.

Whichever technique you choose, make sure your design is MIRRORED when you transfer it to your block. This is especially important if you have numbers or text in your block, as the final print will mirror the carving on the block.

To clarify my art even further I filled in the transfer with a Posca marker. That way when I carved, I knew to carve away the pink part and leave the black.

C  A  R  V  E 

• Always carve AWAY from your body/hands/face.
• Carve out the part of your design that you want to show up white/material-colored, leaving behind what you want to be black/ink-colored. 
• I like to carve out big empty areas first to warm up before moving on to trickier details.
• Carve deeper for thicker lines and shallower for fine lines.

For the trickier details on the right side I started by carving around the confetti spots with a small blade, leaving a lot of room for error and adjustment. 

Then I used a larger blade to carve away the space between the confetti.

Once I had carved the majority of the design, I used a little bit of ink for a test print. With the ink on the surface of the block I could see more clearly what I needed to refine.

I did this process (carving, test print, carving, test print) two more times until I was happy with the carving. One of the things I love about the medium is the imperfections and unexpected texture, so I say don’t worry too much about getting it absolutely perfectly clean.

Remember it’s easy to carve away more, but it’s hard or impossible to put the material back. (But it is possible to fix a spot, scroll through to the bottom of this blog post by Boarding All Rows for more about how!)

P  R  I  N  T  I  N  G

(Disclaimer/Reminder: I’m a self-taught block printer who’s not exactly a perfectionist with this process. This is a general overview of block printing process.)

1. Test Print - Make sure you’ve tested your print a couple of times before you move on making a bunch if prints!
2. Roll out ink - Put a quarter sized amount of ink on your inking plate. Roll out the ink with your brayer, horizontally and vertically, until the ink is flat on the plate and your brayer is completely and evenly covered with ink. The ink and brayer should make a crackly velcro-like sound when it’s evenly spread and ready to use. Printing ink dries quickly so don’t take too long here.
3. Apply ink to block - Roll the ink across your block gently and evenly, being sure to cover the whole design. Don’t miss the corners! Having a larger brayer makes this easier for larger prints,
4. Apply Paper- I believe the proper way to do this is to apply the paper over top of block, but I usually start with the reverse and place the block face down on the paper. You can either eyeball it to center, or use artist tape as a guideline. Be very careful here to prevent the paper or block from sliding and smudging the design.
5. Press the paper- and block together to make sure the two are stuck together. The ink is generally sticky enough that if you do it correctly it shouldn’t be sliding all over.
6. Flip - Ah, this is probably heresy, but at this point I flip the print over so the paper is on top. I’m sorry, block printing gods! Forgive me!
7. Baren down the hatches - Use your baren or big spoon to rub the paper to the block, making sure to apply even pressure all over the design. Again, don’t miss the corners!
8. Peel up paper - Carefully peel up your paper from the print. You made a block print! How’d it go? Take note of issues and see if you can adjust for the next print.
9. Repeat - Set your print aside to dry, clean your hands if they got ink on them. Spread out a bit more ink and repeat the process!

F  I  N  I  S  H    H  I  M

• Dry! Leave your prints somewhere they can dry for two days (for paper prints) or 3-7 days (for cloth prints.) For small print batches I put them on top of books on all my bookcases in the apartment. For larger print batches you can hang string and clothespin the prints up. As you can see with my first cloth product print batches I draped them in my storage room where they wouldn’t be bothered for a few days. 
• Clean up! Always clean and dry your block, ink plate, and brayer after use (according to product directions.) I use water and Dr. Bronner’s soap in my bathroom sink. Any dark stains in the sink are easily cleaned with baking soda and soap. 
• Store! I store my old blocks flat so that they don’t warp or crack.
• Sign! Once the paper prints are completely dry I sign them at the bottom with a blue artists’ pencil, the year on the left and my name on the right. If you are making a limited print run you can also number each print (like for the third print out of a run of 50 you could write ‘03/50‘ and so on.) Sign your work, people!

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R  E  S  O  U  R  C  E  S

• Boarding All Rows block printing guides
• Think Make Share block printing pattern guide
• Ink Print Repeat block print supplies walkthrough
• Wikipedia article on woodblock printing - a great history! 
• Opus Art Supplies block print basics video 
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• Rarepress - Lizzie, Minneapolis-based block print artist, one of my favorites.
• Ink Print Repeat - Andrea Lauren, excellent floral block prints and general block print advice.
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• BLICK Art Materials Block Printing supplies (or check out your local art supply shop!)

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I hope you enjoyed this walkthrough of my block printing process, and are feeling pumped to either pick up this media for the first time or dip back into it again! Did I leave anything out? Did I get anything wrong? Have any other recommended resources or favorite block print artists? What would you like to see for next month’s Making It episode? Let us know in the comments!

And I have a new idea! If you were inspired to try block printing from this article, take some pictures of your results and share them in the community tab here on the Ragonia Patreon! If you’re already an amazing accomplished block printing artist, share your pictures as well and links to your store if you like!
If people are interested in this kind of community, I can even look into creating a Ragonia patron exclusive Discord to talk about art and share our creations. 

I look forward to hearing from you all and seeing your beautiful block prints! 

Go fourth and make art!

xoxo,

Ragon