The Red Stand Mixer

I have a vision of a tomato red stand mixer linocut print, like the awesome "rite of passage" appliance I have sitting in my own kitchen down the hall. Alas, attempts to achieve said red mixer have proven futile thus far.

At first, I thought I could just monotype some red oil paint on top of the prints I made from the linocut. This wasn't altogether unsuccessful, as shown previously, but it removed some of the clarity of the black outline, which I'm not ultimately willing to compromise.

My next thought was to simply paint the print with watercolor. Turns out that since the ink we use for the lino prints is water soluble, then the watercolor paint just makes the black ink run, which does a real number of the crimson paint I attempt to add. Strike 2.

Yesterday, I monotype printed some red mixer shapes, and tomorrow I will try to line up the linocut over them to provide an outline. Best case scenario, they line up perfectly, problem solved. Middling scenario, they don't line up perfectly, but the effect is awesome. Worst case scenario, they don't like up perfectly and look like poop. (Even if the worst case scenario plays out, I will OWN those linocuts and love them as the fruits of my labor).

Any printmakers out there with amazing suggestions for adding color to linocuts? I thought about simply using oil-based ink so that I could in fact watercolor the prints, but the argument our teacher had against that was that using mineral spirits to clean the lino block would deteriorate the linoleum and make it useless faster. For a pro who is making just one run of prints from the block, this might be totally fine. But for someone just finding her way in the world of printmaking...I would like to save my linocut as long as possible so I can continue to experiment with it.

More news to come...