Four Color Wood Block Print

I’ve been making wooden blocks for block printing. Here is my most ambitious project yet, an 8'x8' four color peacock print. I’m printing on both fabric and paper.

The tricky part is cutting it so that it is possible to glue the bits lined up precisely, and designing the second layer of wood in the block so that it helps me line it up while printing. I got very confused while working on it, and started over in the design more than twice, but it finally sorted itself out.

Each block has 4 layers: a birch layer (the one that will print), a hardboard backing layer that the print layer is attached to, and two hardboard layers making a handle of sorts.

Here are the blocks (before I glued the handles on the big ones, but you can see the handle on the little one). You can see I use a combination of engraving and cutting to get the design.

And here’s what it looks like when I’m working on it:

Thanks for looking!