Hi Everyone! This week I am back with another linocut print that I did in my basic printmaking class. This time, it was a part of my independent study so I really wanted to challenge myself with this project. After doing the 4×6 duck carving into linoleum first, I got a feel for how easy it was to carve and decided to do an 8.5×11 linocut. I first started by sketching in my notebook to the exact size of the plate, and I wanted my concept to be a landscape type of scene that represented one of my favorite passages from the Bible. I drew what I thought the scene represented from Psalm 23, with deep valleys and a stream of flowing water, and carved the words “Psalm 23” into one of the sides. It was kind of hard to decifer which parts I wanted to be black and how the different areas of the scene would layer, but once I figured it out it was smooth sailing. The carving took me about 2.5 hours, which was a little bit longer than I expected, but it was totally worth it.
Once I started printing, this is where it took me even longer. I spent 3 hours in the printmaking room trying to perfect it through the press, and also making edits in my carving. The first few prints were not very saturated but they gave me an idea of where I needed to carve to make it more smooth. There was a lot of parts printing in the white space at the top, so I got rid of most of that, and then I decided to carve out the entire tree on the left side as well. It was originally just an outline, but the whole thing felt unbalanced and like it needed more white space. Once I made all the carving edits, it was time to perfect the printing process. I tried printing it on 3 different presses, adding different pressure until I finally got it right on the last press. Once I perfected the pressure, I played around with different papers and printed a lot of the editions on this nice, glossy paper. The ink sits on top rather than sinking into that kind of paper, and I really liked how it looked.
Even though we only had to print an edition of 5 identical prints, I probably printed about 30 copies that day. Here are some pictures of my sketch, the plate, and the final result!
As you can see from the sketch, I was playing with where to put the type and eventually ended up moving it to a whole new spot. I do wish I tried to perfect the plants on the edge of the water more, they look a little bit geometric to me, but I’m still very happy with how they came out. Here are my 5 editions!
This was such a fun challenge and I can’t wait to show next time what we are working on now! Thanks for reading!
Ella 🙂