Editing Woodcut (section)

==Colour==
[[Image:Tokaido09 Odawara.jpg|thumb|[[Odawara-juku]] in the 1830s by [[Hiroshige]], from his series ''[[The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō]]'']]

Coloured woodcuts first appeared in ancient China. The oldest known are three Buddhist images dating to the 10th century. European woodcut prints with coloured blocks were invented in Germany in 1508, and are known as [[chiaroscuro]] woodcuts (see below). However, colour did not become the norm, as it did in Japan in the ''ukiyo-e'' and other forms.

In Europe and Japan, colour woodcuts were normally only used for prints rather than book illustrations. In China, where the individual print did not develop until the nineteenth century, the reverse is true, and early colour woodcuts mostly occur in luxury books about art, especially the more prestigious medium of painting. The first known example is a book on ink-cakes printed in 1606, and colour technique reached its height in books on painting published in the seventeenth century. Notable examples are [[Hu Zhengyan]]'s ''Treatise on the Paintings and Writings of the Ten Bamboo Studio'' of 1633,<ref>{{cite web|title=Shi zhu zhai shu hua pu, or, Ten Bamboo Studio collection of calligraphy and painting|url=http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-FH-00910-00083-00098/1|publisher=Cambridge Digital Library|access-date=11 August 2015}}</ref> and the ''Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual'' published in 1679 and 1701.<ref>L Sickman & A Soper, "The Art and Architecture of China", Pelican History of Art, 3rd ed 1971, Penguin, LOC 70-125675</ref>
[[File:Eisen1.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Bijin (beautiful woman) [[ukiyo-e]] by [[Keisai Eisen]], before 1848]]

In Japan colour technique, called [[nishiki-e]] in its fully developed form, spread more widely, and was used for prints, from the 1760s on. Text was nearly always monochrome, as were images in books, but the growth of the popularity of ''ukiyo-e'' brought with it demand for ever-increasing numbers of colours and complexity of techniques. By the nineteenth century most artists worked in colour. The stages of this development were:

*''Sumizuri-e'' (墨摺り絵, "ink printed pictures") – monochrome printing using only black ink
*''[[Benizuri-e]]'' (紅摺り絵, "crimson printed pictures") – red ink details or highlights added by hand after the printing process；green was sometimes used as well
*''Tan-e'' (丹絵) – orange highlights using a red pigment called ''tan''
*''[[Aizuri-e]]'' (藍摺り絵, "indigo printed pictures"), ''Murasaki-e'' (紫絵, "purple pictures"), and other styles that used a single colour in addition to, or instead of, black ink
*''[[Urushi-e]]'' (漆絵) – a method that used glue to thicken the ink, emboldening the image; gold, mica and other substances were often used to enhance the image further. ''Urushi-e'' can also refer to paintings using [[lacquer]] instead of paint; lacquer was very rarely if ever used on prints.
*''[[Nishiki-e]]'' (錦絵, "brocade pictures") – a method that used multiple blocks for separate portions of the image, so a number of colours could achieve incredibly complex and detailed images; a separate block was carved to apply only to the portion of the image designated for a single colour. Registration marks called ''kentō'' (見当) ensured correspondence between the application of each block.

[[File:Randolph Caldecott illustration2.jpg|thumb|upright|Children's book illustration by [[Randolph Caldecott]]; engraving and printing by [[Edmund Evans]], 1887]]

A number of different methods of colour printing using woodcut (technically [[Chromoxylography]]) were developed in Europe in the 19th century. In 1835, [[George Baxter (printer)|George Baxter]] patented a method using an [[Intaglio printing|intaglio]] line plate (or occasionally a [[lithograph]]), printed in black or a dark colour, and then overprinted with up to twenty different colours from woodblocks. [[Edmund Evans]] used relief and wood throughout, with up to eleven different colours, and latterly specialized in illustrations for children's books, using fewer blocks but overprinting non-solid areas of colour to achieve blended colours. Artists such as [[Randolph Caldecott]], [[Walter Crane]] and [[Kate Greenaway]] were influenced by the Japanese prints now available and [[Japonism|fashionable]] in Europe to create a suitable style, with flat areas of colour.
<br>
<gallery heights="250" widths="250" mode="packed" caption="[[Malo-Renault]] colour woodcut for ''les Cent Bibliophiles 1922''">
File:Bois-gravés Menu-Cent-Bibliophile EMR.jpg|alt=Menu of the annual banquet of the Société des Hundred Bibliophiles, on the occasion of the exit from the Jardin de Bérénice by Maurice Barrès|A matrix for each of the 4 colours
File:Bois-gravés, Menu des Cent Bibliophiles (1922), Malo-Renault (1870-1938).jpg|Colour [[printing registration]] 
</gallery>

[[File:Kirchner - Bildnis Otto Mueller.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Ernst Ludwig Kirchner]], ''Portrait of [[Otto Mueller|Otto Müller]]'' (1915)]]
In the 20th century, [[Ernst Ludwig Kirchner]] of the [[Die Brücke]] group developed a process of producing coloured woodcut prints using a single block applying different colours to the block with a brush ''[[à la poupée]]'' and then printing (halfway between a woodcut and a [[monotype]]).<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Carey |first1=Frances |last2=Griffiths |first2=Antony |title=The Print in Germany, 1880–1933: The Age of Expressionism |year=1984 |publisher=British Museum Press |location=London |isbn=978-0-7141-1621-1 }}</ref> A remarkable example of this technique is the 1915 ''Portrait of [[Otto Mueller|Otto Müller]]'' woodcut print from the collection of the [[British Museum]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_details.aspx?objectid=698272&partid=1&IdNum=1983,0416.3&orig=/research/search_the_collection_database/museum_no__provenance_search.aspx |title=Portrait of Otto Müller (1983,0416.3) |work=British Museum Collection Database |publisher=[[British Museum]] |location=London |access-date=5 June 2010 }}</ref>

===Gallery of Asian woodcuts===
<gallery>
Image:WoodcutBuddaChina.jpg|Coloured woodcut of [[Gautama Buddha]], 10th century, China.
Image:Jiao zi.jpg|[[Jiaozi (currency)]], 10th century, [[Sichuan]], China.
File:Sharaku2.jpg|Actor [[Ichikawa Ebizō]] IV as Takemura Sadanoshin, Japanese woodcut by [[Sharaku]], 1794.
File:Ukiyo-e dragon 2.jpg|Dragon, Japanese woodcut by [[Yoshida Gen'ō]], 1892.
Image:Tranh Đông Hồ - Cá chép.jpg|Modern{{when|date=February 2018}} woodcut Carp Painting, [[Đông Hồ painting]], Vietnam.

</gallery>