Lino Printing

I had a random idea the other day to buy lino to start printing and forgot about it till today. I've never done it before till today but luckily my good old flatmate Cassie did it at school so shoved me in the right direction. It was pretty easy in the end but pretty lethal if you're not careful! I managed to slice one thumb up in 3 different places, one being particularly deep! Damn cutting tool! But other than that it was a great success! Couldn't think of much to do after a huge day of sketching at uni my brain had gone blank but I did two.

It's pretty easy, all you need is some Lino, a roller, some water soluble block printing colour, and a set of cutting tools along with couple of bits of layout paper or tracing paper.. 

You need to draw out the image you want to make,

turn it over, place it where you want the image, 

and draw it again but over the previous lines

so it prints onto the lino in faint pencil lines.

Go over the lines so they're clearer, cut the sheet into a

smaller sheet and then carve out the surrounding lino

with the scraping tool. 

Cellotape a sheet of paper to a desk, put a line of paint

along the top and roll the paint till it's even and making

 a sticky sound (sounds weird but it means it's even!)

Roll the paint evenly over the stencil and place the

stencil down over your sketch pad and cover over with

a book or something so put even weight on it so that 

it prints okay.

Peel off carefully and you should have a neat print! :)