Woodcuts

Woodcuts and linocuts are advanced forms of the simple printing technique we all learned as kids: potato printing. The essence of the art form is to carve away an image or pattern on your medium of choice - wood block, linoleum block, potato, ink the raised, uncarved area, and press onto paper to transfer the image. Just as in other print techniques, the image is reversed. Woodcut or wood block printing has been extensively used to decorate textiles in many cultures - African, Asian, Indian. Gradations of shade are absent in the final works, resulting in very stylized images that look more like patterns than as images.