Holy Woodcut, Batman!

This is a woodcut of the Holy Ghost Catholic church in Basingstoke. It is part of a series of four woodcuts of Basingstoke churches made for the Artikinesis Basingstoke Project.

Before I started cutting into the wood, I drew the design on the block in pencil.

The uninked block, cut from a 30x30cm plywood square using hand chisels such as the one illustrated. Can you see the glaring mistake?

The inked up block

The mistake is more obvious now.

My second test print. For some reason, the first print off of a wood block never quite turns out right.

But my mistake - in forgetting to reverse the image and the writing - was the same in both test prints...