1. Printmaking

2. The history of the relief print is the history of people’s desire to communicate information, first through symbols and later through images and the printed word.

3. Relief Printing In a relief print it is the surface of the block that yields the image. The artist draws an image onto a suitable surface such as a wooden or linoleum block. He then cuts away all the spaces around leaving only the drawn areas raised, or in ‘relief’

4. Ink is applied to the surface using a roller or “brayer” and then transferred onto paper by rubbing or passing the block through a press. Since the cutaway areas do not take the ink, they appear white on the printed image. Relief prints are characterized by bold dark-light contrasts.

18. Albrecht Durer The Riders On the Four Horses (From the Apocalypse, c. 1496) Woodcut Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York