Relief Printing: The Raised Surface That Started Printmaking

Relief printing is the oldest form of printmaking, and it is also the simplest to understand. Take a block of wood. Carve away the areas you do not want to print. Ink the remaining raised surface. Press paper against it. The ink transfers from the raised areas to the paper, and the carved-away areas remain blank. That is the entire principle. It is the same technique whether you are looking at a Chinese woodblock from the 9th century, a Japanese ukiyo-e print by Hokusai, a German woodcut by Albrecht Durer, or a linocut by Picasso. The matrix is raised. The ink sits on top. The recessed areas are absent from the print.

Relief printing is a family of printmaking techniques in which the image is printed from the raised surface of a block or plate. The non-printing areas are carved away, leaving the image standing above the surface. Ink is applied to the raised areas with a roller or brayer, and paper is pressed against the block, either with a press or by hand burnishing. The ink transfers from the raised surface to the paper. Relief printing is the opposite of intaglio, where the ink sits in recessed lines below the surface.

This entry covers how relief printing works, where it came from, which artists defined it, and how to identify a relief print. If you want to understand the foundation of all printmaking, relief printing is where it starts.

How Relief Printing Works: The Raised Surface

The matrix in relief printing is typically a block of wood or a sheet of linoleum. In woodcut, the block is carved along the grain using knives and gouges. In wood engraving, the block is cut across the grain, on the end-grain of a hardwood like boxwood, using steel engraving tools. In linocut, the matrix is a sheet of linoleum, which is softer and easier to carve than wood, with no grain to contend with.

The carving tools are simple. Knives cut lines. Gouges remove larger areas. The artist removes everything that should not print, leaving the image raised above the surface. The depth of the carving does not matter as long as the recessed areas are deep enough to avoid touching the paper during printing.

Ink is applied to the raised surface with a brayer, a rubber or gelatin roller. The brayer picks up a thin, even layer of ink and deposits it on the raised areas. The recessed areas receive no ink. Paper is then placed on the block and pressure is applied. In Western relief printing, a press is often used. In Japanese relief printing, called mokuhanga, the paper is placed on the block and rubbed with a baren, a circular hand tool, to transfer the ink. The baren allows for more control over pressure and produces a different quality of impression than a press.

Color relief prints require multiple blocks, one for each color. Each block is carved to print only the areas of a single color, and the blocks must be registered so the colors align on the paper. The key block, which carries the outlines and main structural lines, is usually printed first or last, with color blocks printed in between. A 2025 article in the International Journal of Education and Art by Gil Alares explored the mokuhanga technique in contemporary practice, noting that "the apparent simplicity of mokuhanga's original printing process, closely related to watercolour painting techniques, distinguishes it from other relief printmaking methods." The article is available at Wiley.

Origins and History

Relief printing is the oldest printmaking tradition. Woodblock printing originated in China, with the earliest surviving examples on cloth dating to before 220 AD. The Great Dharani Sutra, discovered at Bulguksa in South Korea in 1966, is dated between 704 and 751 AD and is the earliest known printed text on paper. Woodblock printing remained the dominant form of printing in East Asia until the 19th century.

In Japan, the ukiyo-e tradition of woodblock printing flourished from the 17th to the 19th century. Artists like Utamaro, Hokusai, and Hiroshige produced prints that depicted kabuki actors, beautiful women, and landscapes. In the 18th century, Suzuki Harunobu established the technique of multicolor woodblock printing called nishiki-e, which used multiple blocks to build up color in sequential printing. Japanese woodblock prints influenced European Japonisme and Impressionism in the late 19th century.

In Europe, woodcut appeared in the late 14th century, used for printing on cloth and then on paper. Block books, where both text and images were cut on a single block for a whole page, appeared in the 1450s. The invention of movable type printing by Gutenberg around 1440 was itself a relief printing technique: the raised type carries the ink, and the recessed areas do not. Woodcuts were the natural companion to movable type because they could be printed on the same press, at the same time, as the text. Intaglio illustrations, like engravings, had to be printed separately because they required a different type of press.

After 1550, intaglio techniques dominated artistic printmaking in Europe. Relief printing continued primarily for book illustrations and popular prints. In the 19th century, wood engraving, which uses the end-grain of hardwood and produces finer detail than plank-cut woodcut, became the primary method for reproducing images in books and periodicals. Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) was the pioneer of wood engraving, and his technique dominated commercial illustration until the rise of halftone photographic reproduction in the late 19th century.

In the 20th century, relief printing returned to fine art. The German Expressionists, including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and Kathe Kollwitz, used woodcut for its raw, graphic power. Picasso made linocuts in the 1950s and 1960s, demonstrating that the humble linoleum block could produce prints of extraordinary sophistication. In Japan, the shin-hanga movement fused traditional ukiyo-e with Western techniques, and artists like Hasui Kawase and Hiroshi Yoshida gained international recognition.

Key Artists Who Worked in Relief

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)

Hokusai is the most famous Japanese woodblock print artist. His The Great Wave off Kanagawa (c. 1831), from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, is one of the most recognized images in world art. The print was made using multiple blocks for different colors, with the key block carrying the outlines. The distinctive Prussian blue, newly imported from Europe, gives the wave its depth. Hokusai's prints demonstrate the extraordinary precision and subtlety that the relief printing process can achieve.

Albrecht Durer (1471-1528)

Durer's woodcuts, including the Apocalypse series (1498) and the Large Passion (1497-1500), demonstrated that woodcut could produce images of extraordinary complexity and detail. Durer's woodcuts were published in book form and distributed across Europe, establishing his reputation. His Rhinoceros (1515), a woodcut based on a written description rather than direct observation, became one of the most influential animal images in European art.

Thomas Bewick (1753-1828)

Bewick invented wood engraving, using the end-grain of boxwood rather than the plank. This allowed for finer detail than plank-cut woodcut because the end-grain is harder and more uniform. Bewick's History of British Birds (1797-1804) and Quadrupeds (1790) established wood engraving as the dominant technique for book illustration for the next century.

Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945)

Kollwitz used woodcut for some of her most powerful images, including The Mothers (1919) and The People (1922) from her War series. The raw, stark contrast of black and white in her woodcuts conveys grief and political outrage with a directness that matches the medium. Kollwitz also worked in etching and lithography, but her woodcuts have a graphic force that the other techniques do not.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Picasso took up linocut in the 1950s and 1960s, working with printer Hidalgo Arnéra in Vallauris, France. His linocuts, including Portrait of Jacqueline (1958) and Still Life under the Lamp (1962), used a reductive technique in which the same block is carved and printed in successive colors, reducing the block with each color. This means the block is destroyed in the process, and earlier colors cannot be reprinted once the block has been carved further.

How to Spot a Relief Print

Relief prints do not have a platemark. Because the ink is transferred from the raised surface by pressing paper against the block, there is no indentation on the paper as there is with intaglio prints. The ink sits on the surface of the paper in a thin, even layer.

Look for the characteristic quality of relief printing. The raised areas deposit ink on the paper, while the carved-away areas remain the color of the paper. The edges of the printed areas may show slight irregularities where the carving was not perfectly clean. In woodcuts, the grain of the wood may be visible in the printed areas, especially in large flat blocks of color. In wood engravings, the lines are finer and more precise, with the crisp quality of steel tools on end-grain hardwood.

Color relief prints made with multiple blocks may show slight misregistration between color layers. In Japanese woodblock prints, the registration is typically very precise, using the kento system of carved registration marks on the block. In Western relief prints, registration may be less precise, especially in hand-printed works.

Related Techniques

Relief printing is one of the four major families of printmaking, alongside intaglio (etching, engraving, drypoint, aquatint, mezzotint), planographic printing (lithography), and stencil printing (screen printing). In relief printing, ink sits on raised areas. In intaglio, ink sits in recessed lines. In lithography, ink sits on a flat surface treated chemically. In screen printing, ink is pushed through open mesh. Relief printing is the only family where the matrix is carved subtractively and the raised surface carries the image.

For more on how printmaking techniques compare, read our entries on intaglio and etching, or explore our post on how to read a painting to learn more about identifying printmaking techniques in museums.

See Relief Prints in Person

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds Durer's woodcuts, including the Apocalypse series and Rhinoceros. The British Museum in London has the largest collection of Japanese woodblock prints outside Japan, including works by Hokusai, Hiroshige, and Utamaro. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam holds German Expressionist woodcuts. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has Picasso's linocuts.

If you want to trace the history of relief printing, start with Chinese woodblocks at the British Library, move to Durer at the Met or the British Museum, look at Hokusai and the ukiyo-e tradition at the Tokyo National Museum or the British Museum, and end with Picasso's linocuts at MoMA. You will see the oldest printmaking tradition still in active use, from 9th-century China to 21st-century studios. For more on the broader context of printmaking, read our entries on intaglio and lithography, or explore our guide to chiaroscuro and dramatic contrast to see how relief printers created tonal effects through hatching and multiple blocks.