Wood Engraving. Wood engraving is a printmaking and letterpress printing technique, in which an artist works an image or matrix of images into a block of wood.
Functionally a variety of woodcut, it uses relief printing, where the artist applies ink to the face of the block and prints using relatively low pressure. By contrast, ordinary engraving, like etching, uses a metal plate for the matrix, and is printed by the intaglio method, where the ink fills the valleys, the removed areas.
As a result, wood engravings deteriorate less quickly than copper-plate engravings, and have a distinctive white-on-black character. Thomas Bewick developed the wood engraving technique in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century.
His work differed from earlier woodcuts in two key ways. First, rather than using woodcarving tools such as knives, Bewick used an engraver's burin.
With this, he could create thin delicate lines, often creating large dark areas in the composition. Second, wood engraving traditionally uses the wood's end grain, while the older technique used the softer side grain. The resulting increased hardness and durability facilitated more detailed images. Wood-engraved blocks could be used on conventional printing presses, which were going through rapid mechanical improvements during the first quarter of the 19th century. The blocks were made the same height as, and composited alongside, movabl
Functionally a variety of woodcut, it uses relief printing, where the artist applies ink to the face of the block and prints using relatively low pressure. By contrast, ordinary engraving, like etching, uses a metal plate for the matrix, and is printed by the intaglio method, where the ink fills the valleys, the removed areas.
As a result, wood engravings deteriorate less quickly than copper-plate engravings, and have a distinctive white-on-black character. Thomas Bewick developed the wood engraving technique in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century.
His work differed from earlier woodcuts in two key ways. First, rather than using woodcarving tools such as knives, Bewick used an engraver's burin.
With this, he could create thin delicate lines, often creating large dark areas in the composition. Second, wood engraving traditionally uses the wood's end grain, while the older technique used the softer side grain. The resulting increased hardness and durability facilitated more detailed images. Wood-engraved blocks could be used on conventional printing presses, which were going through rapid mechanical improvements during the first quarter of the 19th century. The blocks were made the same height as, and composited alongside, movabl
Wikipedia ...