How a linocut print is made

Below, I've outlined each stage used to make my linocut prints. Step-by-step details of specific prints can be found in the Studio Diary section of my blog.  

 

Inspiration

I love spending time in nature and the British countryside. I’m very lucky to live with so much beautiful countryside on my doorstep. The Yorkshire Dales, Yorkshire Coast, Yorkshire Wolds or North York Moors are all within easy reach. I make the most of this and go walking and cycling as much as I can. Holidays provide inspiration too and, in part, have become research trips. The Lake District and Scotland offer very different landscapes to draw from.  

 

I’ve enjoyed photography since my childhood, and now use it to record ideas to work from in my studio. If I find a view that clicks, I’ll spend a long time taking photos from different viewpoints and soaking in the essence of what makes it so special to me.   

 

Sketching design concepts

First, I sketch out ideas from my photographs, planning how I will create the print using multiple lino blocks. 

 

I often sketch concepts on paper and on my iPad. I find that sketching designs at the actual size on paper gives me a clearer idea of what marks are achievable at the scale I’ll be carving my lino. I tend to have more flow and better line quality when I sketch in real life. It also starts to build muscle memory as I carve the lino. It does make a big difference on long sweeping curves. Plus, it feels very odd to draw a pathway a lot one way and then carve it in reverse. 

 

Linocut prints are carved in reverse so that they print the correct way around. Overall, I reverse my photo inspiration, drawing all my ideas from the beginning as a mirror. This helps build up muscle memory for when I come to carve the design into a lino block. 

 

To begin, I usually sketch ideas on Procreate on my iPad. I’m drawn to colour and shapes first. I guess this is my background; I worked as a surface pattern and product designer for 25 years before this. I like to get the general feel for a print before going into too much detail. It allows me to think about what I want the print to look like in terms of blocks of colour, without getting too tied up in knots about how on earth I’m going to make it.

 

Planning

I paint each colour onto a separate layer so I can separate them in Photoshop to create a rough plan. Once I have a rough plan, I sketch the design on paper in more detail. 

 

I often work on a few designs in a series at the same time. The main reason is to see how they’ll look as a collection, and to speed up test printing, ink mixing, and printing the final prints. Using so many colours means it takes a long time to clean up all the inks and rollers. Not every print works, and some end up in my ‘This is rubbish’ naughty corner!

 

Preparing the lino blocks

When I started making linocut prints, I used a synthetic lino called SoftCut as it’s easy to carve with beginner's tools. I bought a set of professional Pheil lino tools with birthday money and switched to using traditional artists' lino to make my linocut prints. 

 

I cut pieces of lino, usually one for each colour to be printed. Accuracy is essential to achieve good registration. This is how each colour lines up within a print. I have various tricks to make this easier. I use a registration device with Ternes Burton pins and tabs. The pins are attached to my registration device, and the tabs are attached to my printing paper. Providing my lino blocks are cut and lined up accurately, my printing paper lines up with each inked lino block. Often, I mount my lino onto backing boards.

 

Carving each lino block

Usually, I carve a separate lino block for each colour within a print. I carve the key block, or the most dominant feature, into the first lino block. This is transferred onto subsequent lino blocks, and each one is carved in turn. Accurate registration is crucial.

 

First, I carve the key lines within my design. Once they’re carved, I add details and then clear away the area I don't want to print. The surface that is left raised, the relief, is inked, and the area that is carved away won’t receive ink and therefore be the background colour or paper.

 

Within my set of Pfeil lino tools, I have 3 U-shaped gouges and 3 V-shaped gouges. These give me a different quality of carving lines or marks. A U-shaped gauge is a softer, more consistent line, and a V-shaped gauge is a more organic, varied line. 

 

Concentration is key. I carve for 10 mins, take a break and so on so that I don't make a mistake. I enjoy listening to audiobooks while I’m carving and in summer, listening to the birds outside my studio window. Each lino block can take 15 to 90 minutes to carve, depending on its complexity.

 

Test printing 

The reason I prefer the multi-block technique for multi-coloured prints over the reduction method is that I can test-print my designs before printing the finished prints.

 

Test printing is when I ink up the carved lino blocks to see if I have the right balance of design, details, and colour in a print. It’s all quite rough, and I print wet-on-wet ink for speed. It gives me an idea of what will work. I spend half a day to a full day on each new print, experimenting with different tones of ink until it's just right. It’s rare that I like a print first off. I usually walk away for a few days or weeks and have to let it settle.

 

I then make any adjustments to the lino blocks. This could be perfecting the registration of the blocks or adjusting the design. Sometimes a lino block might not work at all, so I start again and re-carve it.

 

Mixing my ink colours

I use Hawthorn Printmaking Supplies' stay-open oil-based inks. These are made from vegetable oils with colour pigments added. Stay-open means they don’t skin over, so the ink is usable all day when it’s rolled out on my inking glass. The inks I use are semi-transparent, which gives the finished print depth of colour and allows me to overlay colours to create extra tones.

 

I have a thing about colour, and that is where perfectionism really kicks in! I can easily spend a whole day mixing inks and playing with colours until I get them just right. A slight difference in colour can make a huge difference to the balance within a print.

 

In many of my previous design roles, I created the season's colour palettes for my product area or for all the homeware or clothing ranges. In my very first job, I was responsible for mixing the gouache pots that the entire design team used to paint textile design concepts. I guess that was my training. 

 

For test printing, I mix my small amounts of ink quite roughly. Once I’m happy with my test prints, mix up a small batch of ink. I record the recipe in my colour book and keep any spare ink in a numbered pot. The great thing about Hawthorn’s Stay Open oil-based inks is that I can keep spare ink for a long time. If I’m working on a series of prints, I’ll often use similar or the same colours in each lino print.

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Preparing the paper

I buy acid-free paper in large sheets, which are torn to the right size. Ternes Burton tabs are taped to the back of each sheet to help me line up the colours I print.

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Printing each colour

I print each colour, usually the lightest first, allowing 2-3 days of drying time between colours. The more colours overlap, the more important it is to allow that layer to dry. If I have lots of transparent ink in my mixed ink, the layers take longer to dry. I roll out my ink onto a glass surface and, using a rubber roller (or brayer), I roll thin layers of ink onto the raised surface of the lino block.

 

The inked-up lino block is placed into my registration device, which is fixed to the bed of my etching press. An etching press is a flat bed that feeds between two adjustable-height steel rollers. Using a hand-turned press is still a very manual process. I call my Hawthorns etching press a glorified mangle! That’s because I originally found an old mangle with the intention of converting it into a printing press. However, a professional etching or roller press allows fine adjustments to the roller heights that my mangle does not. I still hand-burnish some prints or elements within a print with a wooden spoon.

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Once the inked-up block is in place, I attach the tabbed paper to the Ternes Burton pins on my registration device. As I wind the handle of my press, the bed feed between the rollers applies pressure and transfers ink to the paper surface. I’ll run a few test prints to test that I have the correct pressure before printing on my final paper. If there's not enough pressure, the prints will be too light, and with too much pressure, I risk crushing my lino block.

 

Each time I go back to ink up the block and repeat the process on the next sheet of paper. 

 

Hand-printing 20 prints of one of the colours within a print takes two to three hours, plus an additional one to two hours for setup and cleanup.

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Drying prints

Once each colour is printed, I leave them to dry. They need to be bone dry before mounting, cello wrapping or framing. 

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See more

Learn more about how I’ve made individual prints in the Studio Diary section of my blog. 

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