Relief printing is the most ancient of the printmaking processes. The earliest printing presses used this process, as well as the first illustrations, and even the first playing cards. Relief printing methods are simple, direct, and the materials relatively inexpensive, but the process is very time consuming. The necessary materials are a block, cutting tools, ink, paper, and a tablespoon or other burnisher. The traditional block is wood (pine, birch, maple, bass, cherry, etc.), but today’s materials such as masonite, linoleum, plywoods and even metal are sometimes used. The printing process is the same regardless of the material used for the block.

     Black and white woodcuts, the most popular type of relief print, are made using a plank-grain block of wood. The composition is drawn on the surface of the wooden block and the background is then cut away with knives and gouges, leaving the composition raised above the background. Black printing ink (either water or oil based) is applied to the surface with a brayer (a rubber roller) and the ink is transferred from the brayer to the raised surface of the composition. Paper is then laid over the inked surface and the back of the paper is rubbed with a spoon or other burnisher to transfer the ink from the wood surface to the paper. The final result is a reversed image of the composition in black against the white background of the paper.

     The process is then repeated until the desired number of identical prints of the composition have been made ("pulled"). The total number of prints of a composition is called an edition, and there may be a few as ten or as many as a hundred prints in a woodcut edition. The size of the edition affects the cost of the print, and between two prints that are more or less equal in size and quality, the print with an edition of twenty-five will be significantly more expensive than a print with an edition of a hundred. Most twentieth-century prints have this information written in pencil below the composition. The numbers 12/25 for example, indicate that this is the twelfth print "pulled" in an edition of twenty-five. Some prints may have the letters A/P (artist’s proof), or simply Proof, instead of an edition number. The artist’s proofs may differ slightly from the other prints in the edition because they were printed before the composition was complete. Such prints give the artist a chance to see the print at that point in its development. Remember, the print will be the reverse image of the composition being created, and such proofs give the artist a chance to decide whether it needs more work or is actually finished. Also, proofs are pulled for the sake of determining how the block should be inked. Economically, an A/P or Proof print is considered more valuable than the edition itself, since it may be a one-of-a-kind work of art. The title of the composition and the artist’s signature should also be written beneath the composition. The signature is particularly important as a guarantee that the entire

process has been completed by the artist or under his or her personal supervision. Without the artist’s signature, the economic value of the print is drastically reduced.

     The use of battleship linoleum in place of the wooden block has become a popular method of introducing the relief printmaking process to secondary school students. Linoleum is relatively soft, has no grain, and is easy to cut, to ink, and to print. The resulting linocut, as it is called, yields a flat, sharp-edged composition, but doesn’t have the richness of surface variation natural to the woodcut. The distinctive characteristics which identify the traditional woodcut from other printmaking processes are the unique marks of the various gouges and knives used in cutting the block, the unexpected ink marks in background areas caused by the brayer accidentally inking ridges not cut deeply enough, and the potentially visible wood-grain pattern caused by the manner in which the wood surface absorbs the ink. The dark and light grains of wood vary in density, with the darker portions being significantly harder than the lighter portions. This means that the lighter portion of the grain may absorb more ink than the darker grain so that the grain pattern itself may be transferred to the print. The possibilities of experimental surfaces in relief printing are limited only by the artist’s imagination.

     The development and printing of a multiple-colored woodcut print differs from black and white woodcut methods only insofar as each color is usually cut and printed from a separate block of wood. The artist prints the colors in sequences from light colors to dark, and allows each color to dry before the next color is printed on the same sheet of paper. There are many variations possible in printing color relief prints. It is possible, for example, to ink a single block with two or more colors if the areas are adequately separated; artists may also graduate the density of a color during the application of the ink, or wipe portions of the surface after the ink has been applied. It is also possible to ink the brayer with two colors before it is transferred to the wood surface. There are frequent minor variations among the edition of a multicolor prints.

     The FULL COLOR PRINTS in this catalogue represent a novel, perhaps unique, combination of woodcut techniques and painting. The narrative black lines of the composition are printed from traditional woodcut blocks on white paper. The black ink is allowed to dry, then the oil based color printing inks are applied to the back of the paper by hand with oil painting brushes. The colored inks are actually forced through the paper from the back, creating a composition similar to traditional color block methods. This process was discovered by Zimmerman through experimentation with various papers and block printing inks and may be totally original in the history of relief prints.