Finished

Here's the final print, and the lino before its final cut. I was going to print another colour after this (a black outline), but it looked good when the green went on, so I thought I'd leave them like this. Will buy some more card at the weekend and start on the next design :)

Second Print

OK, the top image shows the lino block marked up ready for the second cut. The second image is the print once that cut was made...you'll have to squint a bit to see the difference between the grey and the green...I probably should have made the grey lighter to start with...but you live and learn... Anyway, I think everything will workout in the end as the dark green and black that need to go on next, should hold it all together. The final image is a design for the next block, a more interesting design this time I think...I'll try and do a few flowers to make a little set of cards and then try a some different subjects...and possibly some larger images to sell as straight prints.

First Print

Printed the first colour this afternoon (3 more colours to go). All went well...I think :) I've printed onto cards (42 at the moment, might lose a few as I add the remaining colours, but should have a reasonable run I hope). The cards have quite a textured surface, but actually the ink took really well to them...So they currently all look promising :) I'll leave the lino to dry out a little before going onto the second cut. Then when I print that colour, we'll see how well I've lined everything up...:)

First cut done

Finished cutting the white areas....but too late to do a test print tonight...:)

still exploring the white bits...

Did a little more tonight, the white areas are the most fiddly bits it think, so hopefully things will speed up...but then again, knowing me...perhaps not ;) Got a Chinagraph pencil today to markout the areas that need cutting for each pass (the bits i've coloured white). Have also taken my original drawing and reflected it on the PC, so I can look at that while carving. As this is so small, i'm finding I'm cutting 90% of areas with the scalpel rather than the lino tools, which doesn't help speed things up...but does mean I don't feel like i'm going to slice through everything :)

Two posts in one day!

Started cutting out the white areas....will continue soon :)

ready to start cutting...

Worked out the shading this afternoon and then transferred the design onto the lino. All pretty straightforward, just trace the design using a nice soft pencil (I used a 9B), turn the tracing over and tape onto the lino. Rub the back of the tracing to transfer it from the paper to the lino. This will give you a reflection of the original design...when the print is done, the image will be reflected again...taking it back to the correct way around... I then went over the pencil marks on the lino with a permanent marker (note the pencil will rub off the lino very easily, so you need to be a bit careful doing this)...That's it, the lino is now ready for cutting :)

lino design outline

sorry the image is blurry....it's late and I was too tired to take another....here's the outline for the lino, will sketch in the colours next and then transfer onto a lino block...short post this isn't it :)

bubbles

Painted the bath (the white bits) today and did some more work on the bubbles. Not sure you can really see the improvement in the bath in these photos...but it looks much nicer in real life..honest ;)

Bubbles...still proving challenging, have smeared around lots of colour to get a base, fairly happy with that, so I'm now painting darker blobs all over them, will do some more of these in different colours, then put highlights over the top...hopefully at that point they'll look like bubbles...

lino printing

No “Jack” painting tonight, too knackered to stand up, so slumped at the table instead :)

I’ve wanted to do a bit of lino printing for a while, so I’ve drawn this little design to get the ball rolling. I’m going to try something called “suicide” printing, where you keep cutting into the same block, print a colour and cut again…I’ve never done this before…and it seems like I’d better not make a mistake ;)

Anyway, I think I’ll try and make some cards from these if they work…another experiment :)