Living Prints® Woodcut On-line

Details in preview and retrospect

The intricate details are the most difficult to cut, and cutting can be boring. It is close work, hard on the eyes. My tracing shows easily. I rub off the tracing paper to see the lines more clearly. A magnifier and a lamp also help. It is a good idea to take a break and see a preview on paper or compare it to the original image--if one exists.

I already made a rubbing with the graphite method. Another way to get a "preview" is to compare it to the original, in this case a 17th-Century Chinese print. The one I am working from is reproduced in a book. I can roll back the page and press it near the cutting on the woodblock, so it appears as though the image is printed from my block. In the picture below, you can probably see how the two--block and print--would go together.

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  The page from the book of reproductions is in color, but my block is for the black lines only. The arrows point to the flower area I cut for this picture; it took an hour! This would be mind-numbing work if it were not for the fact I can stop now and then to compare mine with that of an artisan who worked on the same image hundreds of years ago using almost the same materials.

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©1999 Bill H. Ritchie, Jr. ritchie@seanet.com