Friday, February 19, 2010

Indian Block Printing

It's been quiet around the blog since I'm been on the road for work & play. One of the trips that I've been on this month is 10 days in India for my 'day job' . Feast your eyes on the method of traditional wood block printing! (More of my own home-made project next week once I've recovered from the jet lag...)
With ink on the first wooden block, he presses the block to the fabric to print.

Here is the result - the printed outline of the motif.

Inking the second block with another color (you can see in the background that he is working on a completely block printed table cloth).

Pressing a third block with another color.

The result is a 3 color pigment print.

After washing and setting the dyes the colors of the print look totally different. Ta Da!


2 comments:

  1. This brings back so many memories for me of doing wood block printing in schools! It's lovely!

    I think, though, that I preferred doing batik ...... such great finishes ...... and such great smells of hot wax .... and such a mess afterwards!! xxx

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