The oldest type of printing which is in trend for many centuries is Block Printing. There is much evidence that shows that block printing existed from the 5^th century but working on block printing started in the 15^th century. It is popular in all corners of the world but its roots are in India, Japan & China. Hand block print is widely popular among several people around the world.

Block printing has a very long history and a variety of techniques are used for it but the most popular technique is one in which carved material is immersed in ink and then the image is transferred on a piece of paper & fabric. It can be used on different types of materials like wood, rubber, or linoleum. I prefer linoleum for work.

Printing done on images using this technique are very bold if compared with other styles of printmaking. As carving is done by hands-on the blocks so texture has more prints and detail is very less. If you use a knife for carving there may be a possibility that blocks can be carved with detail.

The initial step involved in printing is designing the sketch. It is very essential that the image should be reversed if the text is used as the image gets reversed on the block. Once the image gets ready it is then transferred on material which is linoleum so that I get an outline of where carving has to do.

The next step involved in designing of carve. I always do one thing that part which doesn’t need to be printed is carved away as ink is applied on the surface which is raised for the printing of design. The surface which remains untouched will be imprinted on the paper. Time taken for carving is not fixed depending upon the measurement & details of the image. The time required for carving can be an hour, a lot of weeks, or months.