Translations:AY Honors/Block Printing/Answer Key/17/en

A variety of brayers

Block: The block is a piece of material into which the design to be printed is carved. Linoleum is a common block material, but people also use wood, or even potatoes. Linoleum is inexpensive, easy to carve, and makes good prints. Wood is more difficult to work with, and potatoes do not make the greatest prints. Also, you can't really save a potato, as it will begin to decompose as soon as it is cut. Linoleum can be put away for several years and then reused. A new technique uses hobby foam sheets glued to Styrofoam or some other base, which allows you to carve the image without reversing it. Another easy to work with block material is lightweight foam (perhaps from recycled fast food take out containers) as used in this video.
Sandpaper: If you are using linoleum or wood, you will need to sand the surface first to eliminate the texturing. Texturing will come through in your print, which may or may not be desired.
Ink or Paint: Many people prefer to use oil-based ink, but beware - oil-based inks will permanently stain clothing. If you are teaching this honor to a group of children, you would be well advised to stick with water soluble ink. For different effects you can use water soluable paints.
Brayer: A brayer is a hand roller used in printmaking techniques to spread ink or to offset an image from a plate to paper. They can be made of rubber, sponge, acrylic, or leather. Rubber brayers come in varieties of hardness and are primarily used for relief printing. Leather rollers are only used in lithography. Sponge rollers are used only for scrapbooking and other craft applications. A spoon can stand in for the brayer.
Piece of Glass: Ink is poured onto a piece of glass, and then the brayer is rolled over it. This transfers the ink to the brayer. An old picture frame can work well for this.
Paper or fabric: Your design must be printed on something, right?
Baren: The baren is a disk like device with a flat bottom and on the reverse side, a knotted handle. The baren is used to burnish (firmly rub) the paper to pick up ink that has been rolled onto a wood. linoleum, or hobby foam cut. You can also use a wooden spoon, soup spoon or even a rolling pin for this.
Carbon paper: Optional item for transferring traced images to the linoleum
Paper towels: For cleaning up!