Woodcut prints are made by cutting a design onto a wood block or plank, then coating this with ink or paint and printing onto paper. Chiseling out all the unwanted areas of the surface leaves the design in relief.
Woodcut prints are usually strong, simple designs in monochrome or in just a few colors. Because of this, woodcuts have the advantage of being easy to reproduce, which made them a popular form of illustration before modern printing methods.
By courtesy of Henry Mzili Mujunga, artist.
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The wood block used for making your woodcut print needs to be flat and smooth. You will need small, sharp wood chisels, gouges and other tools to carve out the image.
The paints and inks you’ll need for printmaking are thick and viscous, so they will stay in place on the relief design instead of running off or beading. You’ll also need smooth, thick paper to print onto.
(Source: http://www.ehow.com/facts_7616148_basics-woodcut-printmaking.html)
Traditionally, the wooden matrix was carved in such a way that the areas that retained the light colours were cut out first. This ensured that at the end of the process; only the black outline of the subject remained. With the dark-to-light technique, the process is the opposite.
Artist Henry Mzili Mujunga introduced the dark-to-light technique in printmaking to Uganda in the late 1990s, and it has become popular with young artists in Kampala.ฃ