Reused wood cut print making process

I held a resued woodcut print making workshop on 17th Oct in conjunction with the art exhibition about landscape, “Leave nothing but footprints’.

The context to this workshop was; whether images could be carved into the reused wood and still attain a good quality print? I had this big piece of wood(used for shipping a big machine from overseas) at my factory space. I cut(saw) the big piece down to smaller irregular rectangular pieces, round pieces and did some surface treatments by sanding down the rougher surfaces and remove the splinters in order for the resued wood to be safe for handling.

Wood preparation process

I did some design, images that was specific for use in this workshop. By applying some design thinking with shaping the wood pieces, the method of printing the craved wood expanded to include the possibilities of pattern making with repeated prints.

Creating pattern sheet

A single detail image printing with solid colour background

A single detail image printing with lined background

There are a few variations of images that can be produced from the prepared wood. The participants were given some options to experiment around with possible configurations which requires doing image analysis before the step of carving. Interestingly, although the workshop was meant to be a monotone colour printing process. Some participants used duo colours and tricolours to create their prints. Below are prints made by participants of the workshop.