Learning to Lino Print

Geese Flying Lino Print

  Printmaking is a great way to diversify a practice, play around with mark making and style as well as produce multiple prints to sell. The problem thatI encountered was the distance to the nearest printing studio, and the prohibitive cost of even the smallest printing press. From what I could see the cheapest branded press costs £800+ which is a big ask as you still need to buy plates, rollers, and inks ontop.  I love to print monoprints which require a really intense pressure and I nearly despaired at finding anything. In the end I took a gamble and bought a homemade press from a guy in Germany for £240 on ebay. The rollers aren't metal but rubber, which will probably lessen its longevity, but the press is surprisingly good and the monoprints are coming out beautifully. 

Printing Press

  I wanted to create a more sustainable process that would allow me to sell prints at an affordable price.  Never having tried Lino Printing I spend a great deal of time looking at other artists work. I quickly realized that I would need to change my style considerably to come up with an effective design. You can see a selection on my Pininterests page.


  Cutting into lino is tricky, especially maintaining control while applying sufficient force. The depths are hard to judge at first so the shapes come out with clumsy lines and absolutely no delicacy. Experimentation, and practice is the key and I suspect it will take several months if not years to really get the hang of it. There is good advice out there, http://linocutboy.com/ has great tips on equipment and processes, with plenty of online tutorials by a number of artists on You Tube.

   This is the result from my first week playing around. All the birds are on seperate lino sheets which I printed  from all at once. I used Raw Umber Linseed Oil Ink, seriously sticky stuff but the colours are fantastic and bind to the paper really well.  From this print I was able to go back to my lino and make adjustments, clean up edges and change the formation on the next print.
  I bought myself a large selection of linseed oil based inks and with that in mind I decided the birds needed a background to fly against.

Geese Lino Cuts

  As you can see I played around with the prints coming off the backround's box which I liked a lot but the colours are too bold in the background and drown out the birds completely. Need to mute the blue a lot, and either use another blue for the birds to unite the two layers or an even stronger colour to bring them forwards even more.

Geese Christmas Cards

   As I had both silver ink and black paper I couldn't resist having a go. The ink is incredible, much shinier than I anticipated but with the blank black background, and the relative crudeness of the prints, its a rather drab design.

  Tomorrow I want to focus on a series of monoprints, something which is much better suited to my style of art, but I'm excited about the lino cuts I have and the potential in them.