Lino Printing Workshop

Over the summer I have attended several workshops at Leeds College of Art. Two of these workshops were in printmaking techniques. I thoroughly enjoyed these and they have inspired me to enrol on the OCA printmaking course. 

The first course I attended was a 1 day lino printing course tutored by Kirtsie Williams. Click here to link to Kirstie's website

What We Did:

I had done a couple of lino prints when I studies O'level Art back in the 1980s but nothing since. Things have changed somewhat since I last did it. We used a much softer lino which was easier to carve than the hard brown hessian-backed stuff I had previously used. Also the cutting tools were of much better quality and a lot sharper than any I had used before. This made the process of cutting quite pleasurable. 

I only made an A5 plate which was based on a sketch I had made outside the Castel Nuovo in Naples of two people sitting amongst some yuccas. We used Hawthorn "Stay Open" inks which are oil based inks. They are slow to dry which allows them to be out on the bench throughout the workshop without drying up.

We used an iron hand press a (an albion press? or something similar) a very sturdy and expensive piece of equipment. The press gave very dense colour. Kirstie also suggested ways to hand burnish the plates. Going over the back of the paper produced a slightly grainy but even texture. I had a try at burnishing with the back of a spoon. The texture was more uneven with this technique and I had missed a couple of areas. There is a need to be quite methodical when burnishing by hand if an even texture is needed. Of course it is also possible to burnish selectively to deliberately create an even texture. 

Printed on the Press

Hand Printed Using a Roller

Hand Burnished Using a Spoon

In the last hour of the session I realised that I had a bit of time to spare as my design had been rather simple. I decided to adapt the plate and try to do a reduction print. Unfortunately because I hadn't started out with the idea of doing this, I hadn't though about registration of the plate. I just plonked the plate on again where I thought it should go and hoped for the best. The results were very poorly registered prints:

Poorly Registered Linocut Reduction

It wasn't a wasted effort because it helped me to see how important careful planning and attention to plate registration will be as I move forward. I also got to practice cutting with number of tools for example in creating the texture of the grass. I also quite like the way the tool marks pick up slivers of ink giving a texture to the background - another thing to be exploited in the future.

What I learned:

• Handling cutting tools
• Using soft-cut lino
• How to ink the plate
• Using the hand press
• Hand burnishing techniques for necessity or to create texture

Things to do and learn moving forwards:

• More practice with cutting, mark making, textures
• More practice with hand burnishing
• Planning for reduction linocut
• Learn how to register the plate to allow overprinting.

I enjoyed the workshop and will be attending further lino printing classes in the future.