Category: Assignment 1

It’s time to print my linocuts! First I set up everything. I prepared a small sheet of glass to spread the ink, a special roller, various sheets of scrap paper, and a spoon to help with the transfer.

I went with a very thick watercolour paper for my card surface. It’s not labelled, but if my memory serves it’s 300lb hot press Fabriano paper. I had an idea to use black paper as card stock, to just add a little something to the final presentation.

I cut out three sheets from the watercolour paper to make the printing surfaces.

I made a mistake lining out where I wanted to cut, but eh.

Right. Now for the fun part. Everything set up.

Ink.

Press press press.

Moment of truth!

Well. Parts of it didn’t transfer properly, but I’m happy with it. It turned out better than expected. I particularly like the rolling clouds. I think the foreground looks a little unclear, maybe more like ocean that plains of rock.

Okay, onto the other elements, and… Oh no…

Just before I pressed this stamp onto the page I suddenly realised… it’s going to be printed in reverse, isn’t it…

I hope my laziness will be excused for not buying another sheet of linoleum just to fix this one detail. I considered printing it anyway, for comic effect. In the end I decided I will just write in the word Hello myself, after I’ve finished with the other elements.

These all turned out pretty legible, although I should have cut deeper grooves into the raised fist, something that occured to me as I was doing it. The little art supplies, paint brush and pens, could have been placed more thoughtfully, I feel like they’re messing up the composition a bit. But I like it! It’s very me.

My silhouette also didn’t transfer very well. I decided to cheat a little and recitify that with a paint brush.

And I wrote on the top of that sheet with my ink brush. I tried to do it in a way that it didn’t clash with the lino elements. I think it turned out all right.

Now to glue my sheets to the makeshift card stock.

Pritt stick!

Glue glue glue.

And finished!

Here is the final card:

In the end a lot of things didn’t go according to plan but I’m glad I challenged myself to go for something I wouldn’t normally do. I enjoyed the process and I’m pretty happy with the result, even if it is a little rough around the edges.

Next I got started cutting the design into the linoleum. I’ve done this a couple of times before, but not enough to feel comfortable doing it.

 

Finished!

Next I started working on elements that would go on the inside of the card. I had the idea to make a number of small images that represent some of my different interests. I’d then cut around them and fix something to the rear of the linoleum sheet to turn them into custom stamps.

I drew the templates straight onto the lino sheet and started cutting again.

I tried my best to keep the designs large without too many details, but some of them still ended up quite difficult to cut around.

Finally I started cutting out the pieces for my stamps. I cut around the lino shapes with a scissors, and affixed little pieces of thick corrugated cardboard to the back with double sided tape.

Next up: printing and finishing touches!

For the first assignment I need to make a greeting card for my tutor. The card needs to include some details about myself, including interests, hobbies, and aspirations. The first step is to do some brainstorming, so I took my notepad and jotted down some ideas.

My first ideas were geared towards using the materials I’m most experienced with, watercolour or digital work, and portraiture. I personally found the idea of using a self portrait to represent myself a bit… literal. Eventually I got drawn to a particular image, a sort of silhouette of myself reading, accompanied by my two cats. The idea of using a silhouette was intrigueing, and I thought the fact that the assignment is a greeting card meant it would be pretty cool to do something with printmaking. I’ve tried to do a handful of linocuts before, and I’ve always enjoyed the process. I felt like the graphic nature, and the interesting textures that go with lino would be great with a physical card needed for the assignment.

I did have a problem in that I’m not strictly comfortable doing a linocut. But I feel like using unexpected materials and doing everything the hard way is a very me thing to do, so I think the resulting process represents me quite well!

I thought of doing the whole card with different linocuts, using different sets of images to accomplish the brief. Thinking about illustration as a concept, I wondered what kind of words should be included in the card. Should I write a letter in the card? Or include a spider diagram of words that I think represent myself? I don’t think I’m very good at talking about myself, and not hugely comfortable with words. I read over the wording of the assignment again and latched onto the title. “Say hello“. I thought it would be really nice aesthetically to open the card and just have that, “hello”, written on it, surrounded by different images relating to my interests and hobbies.

I had a lot of trouble working on the composition for the final piece. Eventually I moved away from using the reading silhouette for the front cover, feeling like there was too much empty space, and thought it was better suited for the inside of the card. Sort of revealing what I’m like on the inside.

After a bit of thought, I decided on going for a landscape on the front cover. I was inspired by looking through some online galleries of woodcuts and other prints. I recently took some photographs of a nearby geographic region, The Burren, which I’ve always felt has a really beautiful and totally unique landscape, and is so close to home it would be the perfect image for a greeting card.

Here was some inspiration for how I approached drawing my landscape: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/rural-landscape-woodcut-gary-hincks.html

I inked a sketch based off of a photo I took, and did it to A5 size in preparation for a template I would use for the linocut.

I made a quick visit to my wonderful local artshop and bought two sheets of linoleum and a sheet of tracing paper. I used a 2B mechanical pencil to transfer my drawing to the tracing paper.

I layed the tracing paper over the linoleum. I rubbed a spoon over the back of the page to transfer the drawing to the lino.

And… Oh dear. Well that could have turned out better.

In the future I suppose I’ll try using a softer pencil and do bolder lines. Not to worry. I took a pen and tried to restore the image a bit.

This isn’t quite going according to plan, but that’s all part of the art experience!

Next up: Cutting out the design!