basically this is a How To Lino Print
I thought I would take the opportunity of creating an exciting new design so that I could share my lino printing tips with you. I’ll look at all the steps I went through to create and print my Tatty Jackdaw lino print. It’s always good to share lino printing tips as there’s often more than one way to peel an orange, and it all adds to the creativity.
Caw Caw Tatty Jackdaw
It all starts with my linoprint design
Well this is how I do it!
I’m entirely self taught and there’s been a lot of learning by experimentation. Firstly I sit there with a lovely cup of tea and hopefully the sun is streaming in the window or if it’s chilly the fire is lit. It all starts with an idea and this time it was a of gorgeous cheeky, tatty jackdaw. I’m a great nature lover and I’ve spent some time watching jackdaws in the park and their cheeky personalities have shone through, so that’s what I wanted to capture. They’re sleek and reflective and sociable and for some reason a tatty one landed in my mind and began to nest there. I think it’s because I had thought of the words ‘Caw Caw’ and somehow the rest just fell into place! As a designer maker it’s my creative prerogative to make it up as I go along, that’s what creativity is surely?!
Researching my design
At the beginning of my design process I like to look through pictures to get some ideas of how my jackdaws beak and eyes and feet would look as they’re fairly defining features. The next stage in my process is sketching. I start by putting down little details and once I have a handle on some of those defining features, I move on to have a go at some different layouts. I’m a very sketchy sketcher which means I like lots of light wafty lines that give me the idea of the shape without really committing to it. So I sketch the shape and then i start sketching in the details. I am always happy to dive back into my beautiful reference books to do more research if I need to about how feathers and eye position are supposed to look and I looked at a lot of feet to decide how I wanted my jackdaws to be. As with all these things pictures are the inspiration to help form ideas from. Eventually it is time to look away and to allow my imagination to get to it. This is the lovely, magical time when my brain takes all the images that I have looked at and starts to mingle them all together with my original inspiration to create something unique. Also, my jackdaw is ‘tatty’ as opposed to the usual sleek look, so within all of this there is plenty of artistic licence which means I get to make stuff up! Even when I’m drawing a design that’s more stylized such as my Wild Blue Hare logo and print, I still followed the same design process of looking at lots of pictures of hares so that when I started to draw I knew how the hares body fitted together. This means that when I draw my own, stylized version, the hare is instantly recognisable as a hare despite being my quirky Wild Blue Hare version.
Often when I’m beginning to draw my design I might make a great start and then feel woolly about the direction I’m going in, so I walk away if I need to. When this happens, I make a fresh cup of tea and head out to the garden, check on the chickens and allow some time in nature to clear my head. You would be surprised at how much processing my brain can do whilst the rest of me gazes at chickens and collects eggs! Then when I come back to it later I find I can look at it all with fresh eyes and a clearer idea of where the design is heading. When I draw I will normally start with quite a hard pencil like a 2H so that my marks are quite light. Once I feel like all my sketchy, wafty lines are making sense of the shape I want and it’s looking good, it’s time to commit. To be able to carve this design into lino I have to have some stronger outlines to follow, this is when I like to go over all the lovely waftiness with a heavier pencil like a 2B line and gradually start to decide where the actual shape is going to be. When I’m totally (is that even possible?!) happy I draw over my design with a 4B pencil so that it will transfer well onto the lino.
Sketch of Caw Caw Tatty Jackdaw
As part of the design I had to draw marks that would represent the different textures. This meant I had to decide which cut marks I would use to show the feathers on the bird and the pattern of the branch that the bird sits on. Over time I’ve developed my own style and preferences and there are certain patterns and carving marks that I like to use. This is something that comes with time and practice. When I first started learning I spent some time drawing random shapes and patterns onto a piece of scrap lino so that I could see how my marks would work when I cut them. This means that I generally know which style of mark I want to use to represent a particular area of texture. And sometimes I just make up something new. Which could go either way so always worth a practice cut first!
Transferring The design onto lino
Transferring what I have created onto the lino is a really important step in the process of bringing my design to life. It is crucial to make sure that the paper with the design on does not move at all during the transfer process. The slightest movements would distort the picture that I have spent so much time and energy creating and getting exactly as I want it. If the lines are in any way wonky or misaligned, all hell will break loose when I begin to carve the lino. To avoid this kind of disaster I transfer my design by taping my piece of paper, design faced down, onto my piece of lino and I make sure to tape it in position with some masking tape, to ensure it’s held securely in place. If my drawing moves while I’m transferring it I wont be able to carve it properly as the lines will all be slightly wrong. Then I need something to rub firmly over the back of the design with, I use the back of a spoon or a cutting tool handle without the blade! I rub over the design well pressing very firmly, backwards and forwards, whilst making sure the paper doesn’t move. When I feel like I’ve been over the back of all of my design thoroughly I peel up one corner so I can peek and make sure the design has transferred (this is why I used masking tape as it unpeels easily). If it hasn’t I tape the corner I’ve just peeked under back down onto the lino and go backwards and forwards again over which ever part of my design that hadn’t appeared properly onto the lino. When all of my design has appeared on the lino and I am happy with its transfer, I ink up the lines on my lino with a biro or fine point sharpie. I work from the farthest corner so that I don’t smudge over the pen lines as I’m drawing over the pencil lines. If there is an area that I might rub my hand over I just use a piece of clean scrap paper to rest it on. Once I’ve finished I compare the design on paper with my inked up version to check I’ve got everything. Sometimes it’s helpful to take a photo of the inked lino with your mobile phone and reverse the image to make them appear both the same way.
carving the lino
Once my design is successfully transferred on to the lino, it is time to start the carving. I love this bit, I find it so relaxing. Well. As long as I don’t slip! I use flexcut and pfeil tools and I have a wide shallow u gouge for clearing larger spaces. I mainly use the two pfeil, one a v and one a u shape and the shallow gouge. I have essdee tools and a set with long straight handles but as with everything I come back to my favorites and have the three main tools that I do most of my work with. The flexcut are smaller versions so they’re saved for the tiny twiddly bits of a design. Flexcut and pfeil are both created to be really comfortable to hold and they are. My favourite I think are the pfeil just because I’ve used them so much. Below are my flexcut and pfeil tools, I mark their shape on the handle so it’s easier to spot which is which.
In the beginning, I just like to really concentrate on getting the outlines and the background removed. This is the aspect of my process that requires stellar levels of concentration so I tend to work in an orderly fashion from one side to the other or around a major part of the design. Due to the levels of concentration that are needed to tackle the really complex parts of some of my designs, I will sometimes choose to tackle those parts first and just get them done while my attention is fresh. On my jackdaw design I was most nervous about carving the eye. As with any animal it’s all in the eye and I would have had to start again if it had gone all googly. Once I was happy with the eye I started with the border as it was cut with bold cuts and was more of a free style part of the image and then carved around the jackdaw. I cut around the jackdaw with my pfeil v tool and then made that cut slightly wider with my pfeil U shaped tool. That was so that when I started to remove the large area of lino that is the back ground, I didn’t accidently slice into the bird by needing to come too close to it. I followed this with the eye and then the body of the jackdaw to get it’s tatty texture, finishing with the background and the branch. At the very end I use a pair of scissors to cut off the excess lino and just leave the image that I want for printing. I’m pleased to say all went well. As with the designing, if I’m cutting and I’m getting tired and have a few ‘almost accidents’ I do stop and come back to it with fresh hands. Very occasionally, on account of being a human and not a machine, the unthinkable has occasionally happened and I’ve had to re draw and cut an entire design. If you too are a human, you will be pleased to know that there are ways to save and recover some mistakes which I will share with you in another blog.
Lino Cut of Tatty Jackdaw
how to lino print multiple colours
Although most of my designs are printed in one colour, I wanted this lino print to have two colours. This meant I needed to work on printing the background colour first. I decided to use the reverse of my lino cut to print the background as it was already the perfectly framed size. This meant that the back would print back to front, but I quite liked the organic wigglyness of it as overall it was the same shape. I am a fan of the organic nature of all of this and experimenting and seeing what happens is part of what keeps me coming back to working with lino in this way. So when I was inking up the reverse to print the coloured background I made sure not to get the green ink on the tail that pokes out beyond the border (I wiped it clean) so it just made the rectangular shape. Because I wanted a slightly wishy washy background I thinned my water based ink with a drop of water. You can get extenders for oil and water based ink to make them thinner and more opaque. To make sure that all of the backgrounds and then the jackdaw print would all line up I made a simple registration for them on a piece of A4 paper. I did this by centring the lino onto the piece of paper and then drew round it with a biro. This gave me the rectangular frame area that I wanted to print the background colour in.
Rough registration for colour printing
Lino Printing the first colour
Once I was ready to print I inked up my reversed lino with my chosen background colour (in this case a lovely springy, zingy lime) and then arranged it inky side up on the piece of registration paper that I’d previously marked up. I took my paper to be printed on (in this case Snowdon 300gms which is a nice thick paper). Starting on one side I line up my Snowdon paper to the edge of the registration paper and making sure I have it firmly in place on one side, I then let it drop down onto my inky lino. At this point I could use my printing press (in which case I would have added a firm board under the registration paper so that when I was all lined up I could slide it into my book press for printing) but I very often don’t! In the spirit of simplicity I often use a rubber ink roller. I make sure that I’m pressing firmly onto the top piece of paper so it can’t move and I very firmly roll across the back a number of times. moving my hand and the roller to ensure I’ve thoroughly rolled over all of it. I also make a small mark on the back of the paper with a pencil so I know which is the top. I pegged each to dry on a line and once they were dry I was ready to print my second and final colour which was jackdaw design.
Lino print first colour pegged up to dry
Lino printing the Second colour
I did the exact same process as for the first colour, but this time I inked up my tatty jackdaw side of my lino cut. I had chosen black as I thought it would fit beautifully with the jackdaw and my fresh spring background colour. For some reason this colour combination makes think of chocolate lime sweets from my childhood so printing this also makes me feel a tiny bit hungry! I inked up my jackdaw. it’s always a delight to see the first ink go on, and then I lined it up carefully on my registration paper the same as before. This time it was the right way round to fit the registration lines. Making sure I had my Snowdon paper the right way up I lay it onto my lino and then used a rubber roller to firmly hand press my image and pegged it up to dry.
Tatty Jackdaw inked up and ready to print
Lino print of Caw Caw Tatty Jackdaw