After months of lino print designing and peaceful, therapeutic carving, things started to get real today as I joined the crew at Studio West End. I spent the morning happily observing as they inked up, printed lino on acrylic, canvas and paper, and printed etchings onto fabric – all sorts of ideas started brewing in my mind.
Then it was time to open my $400+ box of beautiful printing paper, soak it, and pop it on to my lino cut on the printing press. No colour today – just embossing – so the roller was set more firmly than if I were printing with ink. This was my first time using a press – previous lino prints have been done by hand – and I want one!!! I am absolutely thrilled with how they turned out – I did the 6 medium prints, and the two smaller ones which I carved specifically for the embossing process – I carved the design OUT of the lino instead of having it remain proud, therefore there were no tool-marks on those two – just lovely. These marks probably won’t be so obvious on the inked versions, but I still don’t mind them.
I only did one of the large linocuts as I need to sort out
the ink that I used to delineate the design – a little of it transferred to the
paper after going through the press, and I really would like at least one pure
embossing of each.
Next week I’ll do some more embossing, then I’d better get ready for laying down some colour – and I can’t wait to play with my metallic ink!
