“Narrows blade” – woodcut workshop

Saturday November 8 – Sunday November 9, 2014: woodcut workshop for beginners – Learning cutting on wood to create an image and printing it – a two days bilingual French/English workshop.

‘Woodcut ‘ is just the English name use to ‘label’ the technique we are trying to master, the French use the word “gravure” [ engraving], the Italians the name “ incision ” [ which in English as been appropriate mostly as a surgical term] , from the Latin “incidere”, according to the dictionary means “cut into”… as simple as that!

So, we are going to “cut into” the wood panel [ in this case plywood] and learn how to create, first a “cutted line”, then letters and finally an image. In any case we are confronted with a two choices challenge, creating ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ lines .

Nothing is more rewarding than having tried to overcome to transform a simple but hard material into a balanced image, even so we are left with the unevitable doubts we must have done better, maybe this the interest of it, we will always have more to learn and to perfect…

Basically when a piece of wood has been “cut” or carved, it has its one entity, life – by its nature it is a 3 dimensional art work. Thank to the so called “printing” process we are able to create a ‘mirror’ image of it in 2 dimentions one.

This involve appling a ‘wet color’ [ in this case black] to the part that have not been ‘carved out’, covering it with a piece of paper and then applying enough pressure on it so the ‘wet color’ would be able to transfer itself into the paper. Creating what is called a “print”, or more accurately said, a “wood cut print”. In this case to achive this result we have used a “printing hand press”.

Cutting on wood is an intense procedure, sometimes event it can become a frustrating one, more so if one tackles an unknown material behavior under the pressure a cutting blade. Sharing food and drink help to release physical and mental tension !

Thank you Aphrodite, Caroline, Sophie, Chris, Christian, and Kappy for accepting to challenge yourselves with a difficult graphic material of expression … and challenging me as well!