A woodblock print begins with a drawing. The artist works on paper, refines the image, and then transfers it to a flat block of wood, typically shina (Japanese linden) or cherry in the traditional Japanese process, or end-grain maple or linoleum in Western practice. The areas that will not print are cut away with chisels and gouges, leaving the design in relief on the surface of the block. Ink is applied to this surface and paper is pressed against it, transferring the image. The simplest version of this process can be accomplished by a beginner in an afternoon. The most complex versions, the multi-block, multi-colour Japanese woodblock prints produced by specialist carvers and printers under the direction of a designer in Edo-period Japan, required a division of skilled labour, specialised tools, and a technical vocabulary that took decades to master.
That range, from accessible entry point to lifetime specialisation, is one of the reasons woodblock printing has survived and flourished from its origins in Tang dynasty China (7th century CE) to the present day. Unlike etching or lithography, which require acid baths or specially prepared stones, woodblock printing needs only a block, a cutting tool, and something to apply ink and press paper. The barrier to starting is low. The ceiling for mastery is as high as any medium in art history.
Origins: China, Korea, and the Buddhist Print Tradition
The oldest surviving woodblock print is the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist text printed in China in 868 CE, now in the British Library. It is not the oldest woodblock print ever made; the technique existed in China considerably earlier and was used for printing fabric patterns before it was applied to paper. But the Diamond Sutra represents the oldest surviving example of a complete printed book, and it already shows sophisticated technique: a frontispiece illustration, a long printed text, and a precisely cut colophon giving the date and the name of the sponsor.
The spread of Buddhism drove the early spread of woodblock printing. Buddhist sutras were reproduced in large quantities as acts of piety, and the technique spread from China to Korea and Japan by the 8th century. Japan's Nara period (710-794 CE) provides some of the earliest Japanese examples, again primarily Buddhist texts printed for religious distribution. The medium remained primarily a vehicle for text reproduction until it was applied to pictorial images on a significant scale in the 17th century.
Ukiyo-e: The Floating World
The term ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world) describes the Japanese school of woodblock prints and paintings that flourished from the mid-17th century through the 19th century. The "floating world" referred to the entertainment districts of Edo (modern Tokyo), Osaka, and Kyoto: the theatres, teahouses, restaurants, and pleasure quarters that were the subject matter of much early ukiyo-e. Images of kabuki actors, celebrated wrestlers, and the most fashionable courtesans were the bestselling prints of the 17th and 18th centuries, produced in large editions for a broad urban middle-class market.
Multi-colour printing (nishiki-e, or "brocade pictures") was introduced around 1765, attributed to the publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō working with the printmaker Suzuki Harunobu. Before this development, prints were either monochrome or hand-coloured. Multi-colour printing required multiple woodblocks, one for each colour, precisely aligned using registration marks (kento) cut into the corner of each block. The technical achievement this represented, especially given that each impression involved separate inking and pressing of multiple blocks in exact sequence, is considerable.
The golden age of ukiyo-e, in terms of technical ambition and sustained artistic quality, runs roughly from the introduction of multi-colour printing through the 1850s. Its major figures include Kitagawa Utamaro (c.1753-1806), whose close-up portraits of women are studies in psychological observation as much as formal pattern; Toshusai Sharaku (active 1794-95), whose intensely characterised actor portraits produced in a single burst of activity over ten months remain among the most powerful portrait works in any medium; Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), whose "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji" series includes "The Great Wave off Kanagawa," the most reproduced Japanese artwork in history; and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), whose "Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido" and "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo" brought landscape printing to a peak of atmospheric refinement.
Utagawa Hiroshige, "Plum Garden at Kameido" (1857), from "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo." The bold cropping, flat colour planes, and atmospheric reduction of this image were studied closely by Van Gogh, who made two oil painting copies of Hiroshige prints. Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
How Traditional Japanese Woodblock Prints Were Made
Traditional Japanese woodblock printing was a collaborative process involving at minimum three specialists: the designer (eshi), who created the original composition; the carver (horishi), who transferred the design to the blocks; and the printer (surishi), who applied the ink and pulled each impression. Large publishers employed teams of all three and managed the entire production process from commissioning to sale.
The carver worked from a "key block" (oban), which carried the main outlines of the design. The designer's drawing was pasted face-down onto the smooth block surface and the paper was abraded away, leaving the lines visible in reverse as a guide for cutting. The carver used a range of chisels (aisuki, sankakuto) and gouges to remove everything except the lines themselves. Additional blocks were prepared for each colour, carved to carry only the ink areas for that specific colour in each impression.
Water-based inks mixed with rice paste were applied to the blocks with broad flat brushes. The printer placed the paper, hand-made washi paper with specific absorbency characteristics, over the inked block and burnished it with a baren, a flat pad of twisted bamboo cord wrapped in a bamboo leaf sheath. The pressure transferred the ink to the paper. For a twelve-colour print, the paper passed over twelve blocks in sequence, with the kento registration marks ensuring that each colour aligned precisely with those already printed. The tolerance for error was effectively zero.
Japonisme: The Western Response
Ukiyo-e prints began reaching Europe in significant quantities from the 1850s onward, initially as packaging material (prints were used to wrap exported porcelain) and subsequently through dealers and specialist collectors. Their impact on Western art was immediate and profound. The flat colour areas without modelling, the dramatic cropping borrowed from the viewing angle of the print, the emphasis on silhouette and pattern over three-dimensional illusion: all of these were absorbed by Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters as alternatives to the Western academic tradition.
Monet collected ukiyo-e and his garden at Giverny was directly influenced by Japanese garden design. Van Gogh made oil painting copies of two Hiroshige prints and filled his letters with references to Japanese art as a model for direct, colour-based expression. Toulouse-Lautrec's poster designs use flat colour and bold outline in a manner that is explicitly indebted to the ukiyo-e tradition. The influence was not merely surface-level borrowing but a genuine restructuring of how Western artists thought about pictorial space.
Western Woodblock and Contemporary Practice
In Europe and North America, woodblock printing as an artistic medium developed largely independently of the Japanese tradition until the two cross-pollinated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. German Expressionism made extensive use of woodcut, exploiting its capacity for bold, rough marks, strong contrasts, and an expressiveness that resisted the smooth refinement of photographic reproduction. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and the artists of Die Brücke (The Bridge) produced woodcuts that are among the most powerful prints of the early 20th century.
Contemporary printmakers work across both traditions. Some practise traditional Japanese moku hanga techniques, using water-based inks, washi paper, and multiple blocks with extreme technical precision. Others use the more physically direct Western tradition of oil-based inks and hard-press printing. Digital tools are increasingly integrated into the preparation stages, with designs created or refined on screen before being transferred to the block. The physical process of cutting and printing remains handmade.
Wooden letterpress type blocks showing the relief surface structure common to all woodblock printing: the raised areas carry ink, the lowered areas do not. The same basic principle underlies everything from Tang dynasty Buddhist sutras to contemporary artists' prints. Photo: Unsplash
Getting into Woodblock Printing
Relief printing, including both woodcut and linocut (which uses linoleum rather than wood and cuts more easily, with less grain resistance), is one of the most accessible printmaking techniques for beginners. A basic relief printing setup requires only a block or sheet of linoleum, a set of linocut tools (V-gouges, U-gouges, and veiners), a brayer for rolling ink, water-based or oil-based block printing ink, and paper. The total material cost for a first session is modest, and the basic process can be learned in a single class.
Community print studios and art centres offer printmaking workshops in most cities, and many dedicated printmaking studios have open-access memberships that allow independent practice. For those drawn to the Japanese moku hanga tradition specifically, workshops and intensive courses are offered by practitioners including those at the Crown Point Press in San Francisco, which has published editions with major contemporary artists since 1962.
For understanding the full context of Japanese art of which ukiyo-e was a part, the Hokusai artist spotlight covers the most famous woodblock printmaker in detail. The Great Wave guide explores the world's most recognisable woodblock print specifically. For printmaking more broadly across all techniques, the printmaking 101 guide places woodblock within the full range of the medium.
