A drawing to cut from and a pencil
In the end, you're going to have to do some kind of 'art' to put on your bit of wood. There are ways of transferring sketches onto the wood with transfer paper etc. I tend to just copy it over by hand with a pencil.
A/some "graver(s)" or chisel(s) for cutting
I have 4 or 5 of these little gravers for cutting. They look so cool in the pictures. But I've really ended up only using one, the "Medium - Spitsticker". It seems very general purpose, good for thin straight lines, and for getting around awkward corners. I'd start with one of those, and then think of picking up one of the other gravers if you feel you need it.
Some printers ink
I've tried two types of ink - oil based and water based. I prefer the oil based. You can really tell that it takes to paper better and it's nicer to work with, but it takes a long time to dry, and you have to deal with the smell of both it and the white spirits you'll have to use to get it off your tools. So I'm actually trying out some water based inks at the moment. I'm not really happy with the way they take to the paper (the results seem a little more patchy and less deep) but the cleaning is a dream. These are the oil based inks that I've used. These are the water based.
- A piece of glass for spreading ink onto
- A roller for rolling out the ink on the glass and applying it to the wood
- Some paper to print onto
I'm not much of an expert on the right paper to use for printing. I've actually been mainly using some matte, heavy weight printing paper that has a good weight and seems to take the ink well. I'm sure there are a lot of options here. I've also tried using some blank cards from Paperchase. The ones with too heavy a texture don't seem to work well, but some of the smoother ones have been quite successful. Some experimentation is due here.
Artist Toni Anita Gray
Lady Screams the Blues
Ode to the life of Billie Holiday