Linocut

I've always really enjoyed printmaking in every form I've tried it, but not been in a position to pursue it. Some forms need the dedicated set-up and equipment of a studio, and even the more accessible forms need a lot of space. One of the things I looked forward to about buying my own flat - a flat with a separate bedroom and living room, what luxury compared to renting! - was gaining that space.

So I've been picking up on linocut. Linocut is a variation on the centuries-old predecessor woodcut printmaking, emerging in the early 20th century. Lino has the advantage of being easier to cut into than wood, and now there are even easy-cut linos you can get that have been specially developed for artistic purposes. At the moment I favour traditional lino because I find the modern stuff offers too little resistance - it's hard to maintain a precision and fineness of line when the cutter blade glides too readily into the material.

My first project was completing a lino block I found half-cut in my old supplies. One of the usual disadvantes of traditional lino is that the linseed-oil-based material dries and goes brittle over time but I seem to have been lucky - my old lino has been cutting fine.

The design was based on a photo of a display of Morrocan style lanterns I took one time, but that photo is certainly lost in the mists of time. So to turn what I had into a finished design, I scanned in the linocut as it stood, and used Photoshop to start copying and editing the shapes I'd already done to fill in the empty spaces in a pleasing arrangement.

The way you get a design you've worked out elsewhere onto the block is to trace it onto tracing paper with a soft pencil that leaves plenty of graphite on the paper, reverse that onto the lino block and and rub the back of the paper with something like the back of spoon. You draw over the lines with something that won't smudge of the lino as you work - biro actually works very well - and then you start cutting.

Here you can see which are the new parts I added to the design as they're literally highlighted quite usefully. I'd taken a print off the unfinished block years ago so anything that had been exposed then was stained darker by the ink, wheras the newly cut parts are pale.

Then I printed it up in black oil-based ink which I find so much easier to work with that the alternative water-based - it's stickier so the prints are less likely to slipa nd smudge in the process, plus the colours are nice and dense and crisp.

The print was a success!

That probably gave me a slightly false sense of confidence because the next print I tried was trickier and didn't go so well. The design itself was simple, but I was attempting to do a print using two colours using two blocks.

If you want to do a print with more than one colour you have two options:

You can do a reduction linocut. That means you only have one block you work from. You print first with one colour, then cut away from the block any areas of the image you wish to keep that colour. You ink up in a diffrent colour and print again. Repeat as many times as you want for results that can be extremnely impressive in their detail and colour. However that does of course mean you've cut off - literally - the possibility of making further prints from the same block beyond your oriaignal run. Plus some designs don't lend themselves to this technique.

So I opted for cutting two separate blocks to be printed to form a single final image. The design is based on this design, a typographic treatment of the phrase 'don't panic'.

Both blocks print nicely, but I've had problems with alignment, getting the two parts to sit over each other precisely right.

When you print in linocut you don't place the block face down onto the paper like you were rubber-stamping. You lay the inked block face up, and place the paper down onto it. You have to press on the back hard and evenly to get a nice flat, even print. Some people have a press for this but I use a clean roller and, again, the back of that ever-useful spoon. That's the classic way, and though it is of course harder work, not actually needing any kind of press is one of the main things that makes linocut doable outside a specialist studio.

Either way, the paper going on top, meaning you can't really see exactly where paper is going to meet block, makes it hard to be totally precise about placement. I make a little chock/guide for my print out of craft form sheet stuck to the rough newpaper lining my table. It makes sure by prints end up straright and centred on the paper, but it's not so precise rnough to be up to this particular challenge. In truth, this was my inexperience in linocut - the design is a bad choice for the technique. It would be fine in, for instance, screenprint.

I'm still working out what to do about that. It's especially frustrating because this design could have worked equally well - better, possibly - as overlayed words rather than intersecting words. You can get your print colours to be semi-transparent by mixing in a diluting agent called 'medium'. But the blocks are cut... I'm still working out what to do with this one!

Following that I shied away from multi-colour printing for the time being and decided I'd rework a design I had been working on as two-colour into being monochrome.

The design is based partly on an old poster I did for Waterstones, this one. It was kind of my first poster there in fact, but surprisingly one that remained among my favourites from my six-year stint.

At the time we were relaunching the gift card range, one suggested card design was version of that design, reworked to contain a bookish quote instead of a call to action. You can it in the rough work here. I believe it was me who ruled it out at the time. I had found a Doctor Seuss quote which suited the design perfectly ('Fill your house with stacks of books, in all of the crannies and all of the nooks') but suspected tis was copyrighted text we couldn't use commercially. I might have reworked it with original words (I quite liked this phrase of my own creating, 'Read a new book and you have built a new home'), but the design wasn't working at the small size anyway, so I put it away for another time. I always really liked the way quote and design worked together so I'm really pleased to have finally made something of it.

Coming back to it, I decided that unlike the original Waterstones poster I didn't want the image to be half house elements, half book elements. I thought it would be stronger for the quote and for the size - A4 rather than the poster's 60x40 inches - if the overall shape that was suggested was a house, but all the elements - bar a few details - were actually books. The 'stacks of books' are obvious, and then splayed-open books suggests a gable rather nicey.

The housey detail I left in was the weathercock as I thought it was cute, plus it seemed to help anchor things to the sense of a house.

I varied up the spine decoration on the books, especially adding in some vine-like patterns

The cutting of this one took a long time. Maybe 8-12 hours work spread out over several days. Cutting lino is really hard on the back and neck, and on the hands - you form callouses on the cutter-dripping hand, and it's quite easy to stab your opposite index finger as it holds down the lino.

The details of this design are many and unforgiving, with lots of quite fine lines that quite honestly I don't have the right cutter for as my art shop is sold out of the small-v size! I made the odd slip and mistake but luckily nothing that could be fixed or incorporated with a quick design adjustment. One mistake was especially serendipitous: the book spine on which the word 'your' appears was originally meant to be white letters and decoration on a black spine. I started cutting out the wrong part and so have to reverse it, only to realise the accidental version actually balances much better for the overall composition!

Compared to the designing and the cutting stages, printing with lino cut is quick and straightforward but does have its challenges and frustrations. Despite the care you take, you often find ink has got onto surfaces it shouldn't, which in turn is picked up by the paper in little smuts and marks. The sensible thing to do is cut away the outer areas of lino around the design. I don't know why I didn't before printing - I will before the next run.

The other frustration is drying space. This is an A4 block being printed onto A3 paper. There's only so much floor space I have to lay these out to dry, especially as being oil-based the inks take several days to fully dry out and so prints can't be stacked neatly until then. I keep meaning to set up a washing-line along my hallway to hang drying prints from.

I don't know what I plan to print next. Honestly I'm a bit burned out and knackered today. But I'm so pleased with how this last print came out, I'm hoping I can find another old design to redevelop.

As I've talked about before, taking a second stab at an existing design gives you suhc better resuts than the same time spent working out a design from scratch, for obvious reasons! I did work of such variety, and of which I'm so proud at Waterstones in particular, that matters as an archive only to me... and which, unusually for in-house design work, actually belongs to me as intellectual property. So rewoorking ideas and elements into art that's detached from that brand, and which I can even sell if I want, appeals to me very much.