If you've ever browsed my shop or visited me at a market and wondered why two prints that are the same size can have very different price tags, this post is for you. The short answer is that I use a whole range of printmaking techniques, and some of them are significantly more involved than others. The longer answer is below, and I promise it's more interesting than it sounds.
Let's start at the beginning.
What Is Relief Printing?
Relief printing is one of the oldest forms of printmaking in the world. The basic idea is this: you carve away the parts of a surface that you don't want to print, leaving behind a raised "relief" that holds the ink. When you roll ink across that surface and press it onto paper (or fabric, or clay, or whatever takes your fancy), the raised areas transfer the image.
Think of it like a rubber stamp, just on a much more considered and deliberate scale.
The opposite of relief printing is intaglio printing, where the ink sits in the grooves rather than on the raised surface. Etching is an example of intaglio printing, and I'll come back to that later.
Block Printing vs Linoprinting: What's the Difference?
These two terms get used interchangeably a lot, and honestly, I'm partly responsible for that confusion.
Block printing is the broad umbrella term. It covers any kind of relief printing where you carve or prepare a block or stamp to transfer an image. That block could be made of wood, rubber, foam, a potato, or a piece of linoleum. If you're pressing a carved surface onto paper, you're block printing.
Linoprinting (or linocut printing) is a specific type of block printing where the carving material is linoleum. Traditionally, lino is a natural material made from linseed oil, cork dust, wood flour and pine resin. These days, many printmakers (myself included) also carve soft PVC rubber, which behaves similarly to lino but is gentler on the wrists and easier to print without a press.
So all linoprinting is block printing, but not all block printing is linoprinting. Now that we've sorted that out, let's talk about the different methods I use.
The Relief Printing Methods I Use
Single Plate Printing
This is the most straightforward approach. One carved block, one colour, one print. You carve your design, roll out your ink, press the block to the paper (or the paper to the block), and peel back the reveal.
Simple in concept, but that doesn't mean quick. A single plate print can still involve hours of careful carving, especially when the design has fine lines or intricate detail. What it does mean is that the process is relatively contained. Once the block is carved and the edition is printed, that's it.
Single plate prints are often the most affordable in my range, but "affordable" is relative. There is still a lot of skill, time and intention that goes into every one.
Multiple Plate Printing
This is where things start to get more complex, and more interesting. Instead of one block, I carve a separate block for each colour in the design. Each block has to be printed in registration, meaning it has to line up precisely with the layers that came before it.
If I'm printing a four-colour design, that's four separate blocks carved, four separate inking and printing sessions, and four opportunities for something to go slightly off. The more layers, the more time, and the more nerve-wracking the whole process becomes.
The payoff is a print with real depth and richness of colour. When it works, it really works.
Jigsaw Linoprinting
This one is exactly what it says on the box. The idea is that I carve one block and then cut it apart, like a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece gets inked separately in a different colour, then the whole thing is reassembled and printed in one go.
It's a bit like doing a puzzle while your hands are covered in ink, which is exactly as chaotic as it sounds. But the result is a multi-coloured print pulled from a single block, with a beautiful seamlessness to the way the colours sit next to each other. There are no gaps, no overlaps, just clean colour meeting clean colour at the cut line.
It's fiddly, it's time-consuming, and I love it.
Reduction Printing
Reduction printing is the one that makes people gasp a little when I explain it at markets, and I understand why.
Here's how it works. I start with one block and print the first layer across the entire edition. Then I carve away more of the block and print the second layer on top of the first. Then I carve away more and print the third layer. And so on, until the print is complete.
The catch? Once I move to the second layer, the block from the first layer is gone forever. By the time I reach the final layer, the block is essentially destroyed. There is no going back, no reprinting, no second chances. Every decision has to be made upfront, and every print in the edition has to be completed in one continuous run.
This is why reduction prints are my most expensive work. They are true limited editions in the most literal sense. Once the edition is done, that image can never be printed again. The depth of colour you get from layering ink on ink is also something you simply cannot replicate any other way. My reduction print "An Abundance of Banksia" sold out its entire edition, and that was that. Gone. Onto the next one.
Other Printmaking Techniques I Use
Relief printing is my home base, but I'm a chronic experimenter and I've picked up a few other techniques along the way.
Tetrapak Etching
Etching is traditionally an intaglio process done on metal plates, which requires acid baths and a printing press. Tetrapak etching is a more accessible version that uses the inside of a Tetrapak carton (think juice boxes or milk cartons) as the plate.
You draw or scratch your design into the shiny inner surface of the carton, rub ink into the grooves, wipe back the surface, and then press damp paper onto the plate to pull the ink out of those lines. The result has that beautiful scratchy, textural quality that etching is known for, without the acid or the industrial equipment.
It's a technique I love for its immediacy and its slightly unpredictable results. No two prints are ever quite the same.
Gel Printing
Gel printing uses a gelatine plate (either homemade or commercially produced) as the printing surface. You roll ink onto the plate, lay down stencils, leaves, fabric, or whatever texture takes your fancy, press paper onto it and lift. The result is a monoprint, meaning each one is completely unique and can never be exactly repeated.
This monoprint of grevillea was made by cutting stencils, laying them on the gel plate, pushing pan pastel through the stencil.
I use gel printing a lot for creating interesting backgrounds and layered papers, which I then sometimes incorporate into other work. It's loose, it's playful, and it's a wonderful antidote to the precision required by reduction printing.
Collagraph Printing
A collagraph plate is built up rather than carved away. You glue different textures and materials onto a piece of card or board, seal it, and then ink it up and print from it. The textures you build into the plate translate directly into the print.
Sand, fabric, string, leaves, torn paper, mesh. Anything with an interesting surface can become part of a collagraph plate. The results can be incredibly rich and tactile, with a quality that is hard to achieve any other way.
So Why Do Two A4 Prints Have Different Prices?
Because a single plate A4 print and a reduction A4 print are not the same thing, even if they're the same size and sitting next to each other on my market table.
One might have taken an afternoon. The other might have taken the better part of two weeks, across multiple carving and printing sessions, with no room for error and a strictly limited edition that can never be reprinted.
Size is just one factor. The technique, the number of layers, the complexity of the carving, the size of the edition, and the time involved all play a role in how I price my work.
When you buy one of my prints, you're not just buying a piece of paper with ink on it. You're buying the hours of carving, the careful registration of each layer, the held breath at the moment of the reveal, and in the case of a reduction print, a piece that is genuinely one of a kind in the truest sense.
I think that's worth knowing. And I hope it makes the price tag make a little more sense.
If you'd like to see any of these techniques in action, head over to my Instagram where I share process videos regularly. And if you have questions about a specific print in my shop, feel free to get in touch. I love talking about this stuff.