Wood Engraving vs. Woodcut
What’s the Difference Between Wood Engraving and Woodcut Printing?
Wood engraving and woodcut printing are similar as they are both types of relief printmaking, but they require different tools and types of wood.
Relief Print
Relief print is a type of printmaking where you remove the negative space around your image, so the design is left in relief (raised). Ink is then rolled on top of the block and printed onto paper by hand burnishing or using a printing press.
Linocut, woodcut and wood engraving are all types of relief print.
An example of my wood engraving block for the ‘Beach Walks’ print ready to be printed.
This is the printed image. Notice how all the areas I removed are white and the areas that are left in relief held ink and printed black. That’s relief printing!
Wood Engraving
This is the technique I usually use. It is a type of relief print that requires end-grain wood blocks (wood that is cut across the grain). These are hard, dense, and great for holding fine detail/printing large editions.
Engraving Tools
Metal burins are used to engrave the image onto the block. They are very sharp and I think of the engraving motion as pushing the wood out to remove it (whereas woodcut is more of a carving or gauging motion).
Characteristics
Wood engraving prints are usually quite small and don’t show the grain/texture of the wood. They are usually black and white to show the full tonal range of the image, but there are some wood engravers who use colour in their work.
Printing Wood Engravings
Wood engravings can be printed by hand using a burnishing tool or on a traditional platen press like an Albion press where heavy pressure is applied to the block evenly from above (not an etching press where the block is rolled through on a flat bed).
Woodcut Printing
Woodcut is a type of relief printing as well but it uses side grain wood (cut along the grain) which is softer than the end grain blocks used for engraving.
Example of a side-grain wood block
Characteristics
Woodcut prints are usually larger than wood engraving prints and often show the grain and textures of the wood in the final print.
It is more common to see colour being used in woodcut prints than in wood engraving prints. Artists making coloured woodcuts will either use multiple blocks - one for each colour - or do a reduction print where they use only one block to print multiple colours. Each time they print a layer they carve away more of the block, then print the next colour/layer.
Woodcut Tools
Knives, U and V-shaped gauges are used to cut and gauge out the wood. See examples below:
Printing Woodcuts
Woodcut blocks can be printed by hand using any type of burnishing tool, wooden spoon, or barren, or they can be printed on a platen or roller press (like an etching press).
