I recently had an incredibly useful session in the print room with my lecturer and the print technician, who both showed me a lot about lino printing. We used the University’s lovely but neglected Albion press, of which there are two in Europe, both situated in our University. I was immediately told not to use the water based ink I’d been leaning towards, but instead the oil based, which is a very different texture. Padding was another thing I knew nothing of but is very important in getting the correct density of ink in the image. There seems to be two main variables- the ink and pressure, so it should be pretty straightforward to work out what is lacking.

Using the press shows the flaws of a lino more than hand pulling, the pressure forces the paper in to the hollow on the lino and picks up all the recessed ink, so I think I’ll have to re cut most of the daisies image- the pigeons is ok in the main, as the large expanses of black, uncut lino mean the paper can be pushed so low. I love how the grain of the lino shows through, the texture is so much nicer than any flat black of modern printing.

I thought I’d post a few images of the lino cut image, to show how the ink and baren changes the image. This lino is made from the ink drawings in the previous post, if you care to see. The image above is the first pull, which was done with Schminke waterbased relief ink, and cartridge paper, rubbing the back of the paper with the base of a water bottle.

Oddly, I prefer the first image to the second, which used Speedball waterbased inks, thin, japanese paper, and a plastic baren from Intaglio Printmakers.

Time to show some of what I’ve been up to over the long and quiet month of December! The above is a linoprint, which works quite nicely on fabric, but not so well on the textured card. (Underneath is my incredibly messy desk!)

Another repeat pattern- this time I didn’t use the Julia Rothman tutorial, I used a rather snappy Photoshop filter called Offset, which basically does the work of chopping your paper in half for you. The method is described here (though this wasn’t the tutorial I used).

And I also did a bit of silkscreening using a contact paper stencil- I took photos along the way as well, so a tutorial is in the works.