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One layer at a time

While woodblock printing has a rich heritage, the challenge becomes how to carry it forward in the digital era

Updated: 2026-10-17 10:22 ( China Daily )

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Wang Rui, veteran artists at Rongbaozhai, show the steps of woodblock water printing. The process requires skill, patience and experience to achieve a balance between faithfulness and expressiveness. [Photo provided to China Daily]

This is also why he does not see woodblock printing as a method of duplication. In his view, the process is not a matter of transferring an image mechanically from one surface to another. Before a single block is carved, the printer must study the original painting, identify its layers of line, color, texture, and ink, and decide how to translate each element into wood, ink and paper.

"In that sense, the original painting is the first layer of the artwork: it is the source and the standard against which the reproduction is judged. But the reproduction becomes a second artistic layer, because the printer must make countless decisions about what to preserve, what to simplify, and how to re-create effects that cannot be transferred literally," Li says.