Japanese Woodblock Printing and Collographs

In class on Thursday I went over a quick Japanese woodblock carving and printing demo. After playing around with some of the tools from Baren Mall on scrap pieces of wood from McClain's, I showed everyone how to print a simple woodblock.


After soaking the blocks in water for a few minutes, you add a few drops of watercolor mixed with Nori (rice paste) to the block.


Next you use this traditional brush to spread the ink evenly across the block.


You then lay your hoshi printing paper over the block. Ideally your paper would be decanted in a plastic bag with spritzed newsprint in between each sheet of hoshi.


With freezer or wax paper on top, you use a barren to place even strokes of pressure across the paper.


Then you peel off your print!


Many of the students also printed their collograph plates. Nate made many blind embossments of the above plate.


This is Jamie's colorful collograph.


Nate and Jamie in action.

Monotype printing

This week we went over monotype printing on plexi. We started by ripping down our sized Stonehenge paper with the T-Bar.



Everyone then sketched out their design for our monotype exquisite corpse, while their paper soaked in the tub.


We mixed oil based etching inks and placed our sketches underneath the plexi.


Everyone then painted, dabbed, wiped off or scraped the ink onto and off of their plates.


We then worked on the etching presses to pull the prints after drying off excess water in the paper between blotters. The presses were set to 1 over 7 and 10 over 4.


We placed a piece of acetate with the paper measurements in sharpie marker down first, then the inked plexi, then the soaked paper, a piece of newsprint, and a top layer of acetate before laying the blankets down.


Here Andrea is pulling her print through the press.


After it goes through the press she peeled it up to reveal her print.


We each will make five prints and combine them into accordion books in session six.

Stab Binding and Screenprinting

Session Three of Printing and Binding we covered traditional Japanese stab bindings and created simple flip books. We then taped up screens and printed cut paper stencils in preparation for the printed book due in three weeks.

Screenprinting with Stencils

Materials needed:

• Screen
• Squeegee
• Packing tape
• Screenprinting ink
• Butcher paper or water-resistent paper
• Craft knife
• Cutting mat
• Marker
• Paper
• Acetate (one sheet)
• Spatula

Step One: Design your stencil with the marker on the uncoated side of the butcher paper. Make sure to keep it somewhat small and simple.

Step Two: Cut out your design with the craft knife.

Step Three: Adhere your stencil to the outer side of the screen with packing tape. Make sure the coated side is taped against the screen. Tape any areas close to the image area where you do not want ink to go through the screen.

Step Four: Put your screen in the clamps and adhere the acetate near where the stencil will be printed.

Step Five: With paper under the acetate, put ink on the top of where the stencil is taped.

Step Six: With two hands (not shown in picture), push and pull the ink with the squeegee at approximately a 45 degree angle towards yourself; printing on the acetate.

Step Seven: You now know exactly where the ink will land when you pull your prints. Place your paper where you want the print to be, then remove the acetate and pull again- this time printing on the paper.

Step Eight: Flooding between pulls will prevent the screen from drying out. Flooding is when you gently pull a layer of ink over the print area.

Step Nine: Put your print on the drying rack and repeat.

Step Ten: Once you are finished printing, clean out the ink in your screen and on your spatula and squeegee. Hold your screen up to the light to make sure there is no blockage.