Woodcut is one of the artistic techniques in the plastic area that is based on the marking of designs on wooden surfaces to later be printed through the use of inks and paper. Woodcut is one of the oldest forms of art and today it appears as a very genuine and different way of representing various symbols, images or situations.
The process by which a woodcut is made can range from relatively simple to complex. This is so because, unlike what happens with other plastic arts such as painting or drawing, all types of engravings (such as xylography, lithography -which is done on stone- or linography -which executed on linoleum plates-) have two work phases: first the drawing must be made on the selected material plate and then, once the design is complete, it is completely covered with ink, so that the furrowed spaces and the Reliefs will be visible since the ink, when applied with a roller, will only remain in the highest reliefs. Then, this design is printed on a sheet, on fabric, on different surfaces through the pressure that is exerted on the wood while it is still fresh. By removing the paper or the surface on which it was printed, you get a copy of the design. In this sense, one must be very careful since the image that one obtains when printing will be inverted with respect to the original design since the action is given by a reflection of the image.
To be able to carry out the woodcut more easily, it is always advisable to use woods that are firm but that at the same time contain an element of plasticity and elasticity, which allows the work with the gouge or burin to be easier but does not completely destroy the wood grain. The most used woods in this sense are cherry or pear.
The interesting thing about woodcut is that with a single plate already worked, one can make countless prints that, otherwise, as with painting, it would be much more difficult to reproduce over and over again. In addition, you can clean the worked woods and change the colors of the ink, thus achieving several reproductions of the same design in different shades and colors.
