I’ve been learning woodblock printing for about two years now, but the pieces in this post were all created during my first year working with the medium — throughout 2024.

Unfortunately, this second year has been a bit rougher creatively, and I’ve been less active in the studio than I would have liked.

Even more ironically, that slowdown happened right as I started this blog — which originally launched with a strong focus on printmaking. Because of that, I feel like I’ve actually shared very little of my finished work here.

That said, I’m not interested in shaping my creativity just to keep the blog consistent. The whole point of this space is the opposite: to document my creative journey honestly, through all its messy turns, experiments, and emotional ups and downs.

Still, I realized that I never properly showed you the prints themselves — so here they are: the full collection of woodblock prints I created during 2024, presented in chronological order alongside a few notes from the process.

1. My first woodblock print

My first piece was based on an existing digital drawing I had made earlier. I chose it because it seemed simple enough to translate into a print — which was definitely the right call for a first attempt.

With this piece I learned a lot about carving sharp edges and corners, and I started getting familiar with the tools and with the general feeling of carving curves and lines into the wood.

Looking back now, it feels like the beginning of everything.

2. Couple self-portrait

This piece also started as a digital design. It’s a stylized portrait of me and my partner.

Technically, this was a big leap forward for me. I experimented with organic shapes, thin lines, small details, multiple colors, and even learned how to create a masking border around the print.

It’s still one of my favorite pieces. A copy of it hangs on my front door.

3. Totoro and my cats

I created this print as a party favor for my birthday that year — the party theme was Studio Ghibli.

The design references the famous scene where Mei falls asleep on Totoro, except here Totoro is joined by my three cats. It ended up being quite a detailed piece for its size.

I’m really happy with how it turned out, although the centering could definitely have been better. The decorative border is my favorite part of the whole composition.

4. The sleepy time spirit

This piece was inspired by the book series The Priory of the Orange Tree and, once again, started as a digital design before becoming a print.

It’s my largest woodblock piece so far, and I really enjoyed experimenting with textures and color combinations in this one.

This is also the only piece I’ve professionally digitized and reprinted. Because the original prints vary so much in color combinations, they’re a very small and inconsistent edition — so the digitized versions became the copies I could actually gift to friends.

And speaking of variations… there are so many. I had an incredible time experimenting with color on this project. I genuinely cannot choose a favorite.

5. Boxed-In

This piece was created for the first annual student exhibition held at CIC at the end of the year. The requirements were a fixed size and black-and-white printing.

To be completely honest, this is probably my least favorite piece in the collection — even though I still like the concept behind it.

While reviewing my prints for this post, I discovered that some candy had melted on the board at some point 😬 and that a few of my limited prints had been stored with a fold in them…

Oh well. Part of the learning process, I guess.