Linoleum Printmaking

Lake Hartop Linoleum Printmaking by Domnita Vieru

So we got introduced to Linoleum Printmaking which is a method that I didn't know of. It's actually very interesting how it's done though and it also very fun to do.

So we had to carve the Linoleum and make a design out of it to print. I chose to make a smiley with a thumb up saying "Yay!" because I nailed the Lino print haha. So I sketched it on the Linoleum and carve it with some wood carving tool because these were cheaper haha. Took me quite a long time to carve because I had to remove a large area but I did it.

So here are the results. The one thing that I didn't realised was that the "Yay!" will be upside down as it's like a mirror effect when you print so be careful for that. Also with Lino Ink the print got a very glossy effect, this is also maybe because I have used too much Ink on my template. I'm also not very good at carving so my lines are crooked and I haven't carve the inside deep enough and got some lines in the middle. With this design or illustration or whatever it is, I've been able to experiment with both hollowing the design and leave the lines and also hollow the lines (the smiley) and leave the area inside (the hand, the teeth).

I also tried to print on a kind of felt paper thing, however the Ink didn't hold well of it and it became very pale. The texture that I've got was very interesting though.

So yeah, here's the back of the paper and that's about the mirror effect that I was talking about. Here's the "yay!" correctly and how it should look. That's where I messed up so yeah if you putting wordings in your lino work be careful for that haha. Oh, and also by being messy and careless I have been able to get a very interesting texture with the lino ink on the back of the right paper by stacking up my works before they were dried completely haha.

Well after doing it I can say that Linoleum can give you a very amazing kind of texture, it's mostly gonna look like black and white comics or a messy pen/marker artwork. you can do really amazing artwork with it but you would need some practice for the carving if you're new to carving like me. However it's quite expensive so it might not be a method that I will use often because of my tight budget but I really wanna explore it more when I can.