ELI5: What Is a Woodcut?

A woodcut is a way of printing pictures using a piece of wood, just like using a giant wooden ink stamp.

Imagine you are playing with clay, and you carve a smiley face into it with a spoon so that the eyes and mouth sink in, but the cheeks stay raised up. If you dip that clay in paint and press it onto paper, only the parts that stick out will leave a mark.

That is exactly how an artist makes a woodcut, but with real wood:

• The Drawing: The artist sketches an image onto a smooth, flat wooden block.
• The Carving: They use small, sharp tools to cut away all the empty background spaces, leaving only the lines of the picture sticking out.
• The Inking: A roller spreads wet ink over the raised wooden lines.
• The Pressing: The artist presses a sheet of paper onto the inked wood. When they peel the paper away, the picture is stamped onto it!

Long before people had modern color printers or photocopiers, woodcut printing was the main way humans made copies of pictures for everyday items like storybooks, playing cards, newspaper illustrations, and posters on the street. Because the carved wooden block lasts a long time, the artist could stamp the exact same picture hundreds of times, making it easy for lots of people to share and enjoy the same art.