Adventures in Printmaking: Linoleum Block Printing

Soon to come is a very step-by-step look at linoleum block printing, but for the time being, I wanted to write a bit about my very first experience with this method.

(Actually, this was my second experience, my first being a month or so ago when I worked with linoleum with one of my students. That lino was extremely soft and easy to carve, and therefore a COMPLETELY different experience than this "real" first try...but I digress).

Our printmaking teacher asked us to pick a design, and I immediately reached for my kitchenaid stand mixer printout. I had been waiting to use this one, and my teacher "hmmm"ed over it, and then nodded. "It's very graphic. It will work well for this." Yessssss!

After transferring our designs onto the lino block using a graphite-transfer method (again, more to come too), we jumped in with our carving tools, these incredibly awesome Speedball-brand tools that have various carving tips that you can take on and off the end, depending on what kinds of cuts you want to make in the lino. I took a deep breath, and dug it. I placed the tip of the tool to the lino on one of the outlines of my stand mixer, and pushed it forward, slowly, with great control, being careful not to get my hand in the way of the tool and gouge my palm...and it slipped.

First cut, it slipped.

I used one of my school-friendly swears -- "F!" -- and started again, struggling with the ridiculously stiff linoleum.

By the end of the three-hour class, I had approximately 60% of my design carved, a cramped hand, and a frustration so immense it threatened to eat my soul.

"Oh!" pipes up George, the slightly sarcastic and disorganized but delightful teacher. "I forgot a trick! Where's the hot plate?" He looks around, can't find it, and then tells us, "Well, anyway, if you use an iron on low, it will make the linoleum soft, and easier to cut."

Bingo.

I went home last weekend, and finish the project, and then printed it in the studio the following Monday. The first print was beautiful:

I decided that the bowl was a little busy, so I went back at the lino block with my tools, and carved away some of the shading. After printing the re-done block, I decided to add some color -- not an easy process, due to the opacity of the lino block! With some forms of print-making, your inked surface is a clear piece of plexi-glass, so lining up layers of ink is pretty easy and, well, visible -- not so in this case. I ended up experimenting (and I'm not done experimenting yet!), and came up with this:

I'm not 100% thrilled with the way the red sits on the original print, and I'm going to do some water-color painting on other test prints, but overall, I like where this is going.

Constant revision is the name of the game, I guess!

Styrofoam Printing

One of the things I am really enjoying about printmaking is that it has that it has this incredibly awesome low-tech side to it that allows for making prints out of easy, "non-artistic" material. When I taught 6th grade in Louisiana, I co-taught an art class with my good friend. We did some small printing using gum erasers as a medium, pencils/paper clips for carving, and markers for ink. Cheap, low-tech, and easy. Potato stamping is another great example, near and dear to many people's hearts, as they recall classroom memories from elementary school.

Another beautiful and simple material is styrofoam.

When I bought something this past summer (and for the life of me, I have no idea what it was), it came in a hulking piece of white styrofoam as packaging. I was about to toss the styrofoam, but instead thought, "Wait, I bet I can use this for a class!" I work at a school where we do all project-based learning, and so I'm always collecting random materials that "might come in handy." Turns out that keeping the styrofoam was a good decision.

Yesterday, my student and I explored carving and printing with the styrofoam. It was truly a learning experience, and involved some creative problem solving. First, we tried just "drawing hard" into the foam to create a lined image, but we discovered that the styrofoam was created from small circles or balls of foam, and so it had a texture into which you couldn't carve a uniform line -- you basically has to "push down" the tiny circles to form your image.

Once we got past that hurdle, we went about creating our images. In the mood for Halloween, I envisions a bit of a Grendel character roaring. But as I went to carve his roar, I remembered one of my previous oopsies -- in relief printing, the print is backwards from the stamp, so I had to reverse the word in my head before I carved it into the foam. Crisis averted.

My finished block appears below (this is a post-printing picture, so it does indeed have paint stains!)



After the carving, we jumped right into printing. At school, we have a collection of acrylic paints, which dry quickly, so we had to work relatively fast in "inking" our blocks. I wanted to print on black construction paper, so went with a cream color for my print. The first inking turned out less-than-satisfactorily:



I couldn't read the ROAR!, my little guy's green color hadn't printed, and it was just too light. We moved on, and decided that a heavier inking was necessary. Try 2 was a vast improvement:



Much better, much more legible! We decided on a final try, with even more paint on the block, and came up with this final image:



Success. And quite cute, if I do say so myself.

Sure, it's nothing that's going to win any awards, but it has good contrast, good texture, and was virtually free to produce (construction paper and acrylic paint are cheap, and the foam was literally free!).

While I appreciate the more technical aspect of printmaking, I'm starting to see the beauty in simplicity, too.

The Whole Wide Room at Cafepress

Adventures in Printmaking: Monotype

As I mentioned before, I've started a printmaking class recently, and I am in love. We started with additive monoprinting, which is basically copying or creating a painting on a piece of plexiglass, and then transferring it onto paper. With a monoprint, you generally get a single print (with perhaps a follow-up or "ghost print"), but it's not an endless supply, like those you could make with, say, a lino block or a silkscreen technique. For example, I started with a pretty simple picture I love from the Sound of Music:



Just a dab of blue paint in the dark spots (and an ever-changing handle on ideas of light and dark) and voila! Monoprint!

There are also subtractive methods of monoprinting, in which you roll up the piece of plexiglass, and then subtract ink before printing it. You can subtract ink by wiping it away with Q-tips, pieces of cardboard, cotton balls, or by placing something solid over the plate -- for example, grass. Behold:



Nice, eh?

By adding a step, you can get different gradations of hue. Here's a subtractive monoprint I did with yarn:

For this one, I rolled up the plexi with brown ink, added yarn lying over the plate, printed one piece with the yarn on, then took the yarn off and printed this second one. The places where the yarn HAD been had more ink, hence the darker squiggles. The places the yarn HADN'T been had already been printed once, and so some of the ink was gone, hence the lighter shade. Cool, huh?

I think that's the beauty of printmaking, is that you can add processes together, and get endlessly complex pieces. Along with this, however, comes the fine art of knowing when to stop. It's easy to take one extra step and end up with something that's overdone. Take this conglomerate, for example:It's got a certain charm, a kind of printmaker's camouflage. But before that final layer of gold, it had a totally different look, a much more clear and articulate style. There was more white, and the white really pulled together and separated simultaneously the areas of color. I learned my lesson here. Stop when I like something, and don't overdo it.

Next time: subtractive red, yellow, blue monoprints. Get psyched!

The Whole Wide Room

Cafepress shop has opened!

I decided to take my crafting to the next level, and open a cafepress shop selling t-shirts, mugs, water bottles, bags, clocks, etc, with my artwork on them.

I've been pretty inspired lately, primarily by the printmaking class I am taking. While I've always considered myself to be quite the craftster, I really love trying out new artforms. Printmaking is something I've never done before, and I'm a little in love with it right now. I feel very fortunate that my relatively new hometown of Burlington, VT, has a bumpin' arts scene, and things like printmaking classes are even available to the general public.

I find myself scattered in my inspiration, and my shop reflects this. A little of this, a little of that, but all fun and, I like to think, quirky. It's who I am!

So, without further ado, please check out www.cafepress.com/thewholewideroom