Project 6: Single Colour Linocut 1

I had made a start on this project before I receiving the feedback from my previous assignment. I had realised with the test block that I could make very fine lines with my fine V tool, and that I could, therefore create hatching and dots and lines in much the same way as when using a pen. I was inspired, therefore to make an attempt to recreate a drawing of onions hanging from a rough stick to dry which I'd made in a garden in Ischia using a single rollerball pen. I therefore used mainly the fine v shaped tool to create the drawing 'in negative on a grey Lino block - printing in black ink onto white paper. I printed these using my bottle-jack press.

The original drawing

I printed the image onto various paper types: Cartridge paper, Japanese paper and textured, coloured paper.

Linocut printed in Hawthorn stay-open oil-based ink onto cartridge paper

Linocut printed in Hawthorn stay-open oil-based ink onto Japanese paper

I tried printing onto sugar paper but this really didn't work - the paper was very absorbent and would have required a lot more ink.

I also printed onto textured and coloured pastel paper. This didn't produce an entirely clean print but I quite liked the areas of texture which showed through.

Overall, I quite liked the resulting image. However, I realised that there wasn't a very wide variety of marks in this and so it didn't really achieve the objective of the brief which was all about mark-making. I had also received my feedback from assignment 1 which suggested that I look more carefully at my choice of subject matter. My tutor suggested I should:

"Reflect more fully on the wider context of your work and what you are making work about."

As a result, I decided I needed to do some more research , more sketches and look for an underlying reason for making work - something that would interest me and carry me forwards.