Introduction to Linocut Printing for Beginners

hi everyone is Hollie from hand-printed today I'm going to talk you through a really simple liner cut project gonna go right from the beginning so for those of you who are wanting to start out with minor cut but not well not quite sure how to start or you want to get the kit you're not sure what to get or maybe you've just bought a kit or some equipment and you not sure how to use them yet this is the video for you firstly you'll need a piece of lino this is traditional gray heavy and back liner we sell loads of this in the hand printed shop it's really really popular this is traditional stuff I'm gonna carve with this today and you might have memories of using it at school at college and it being rock-hard and crumbly that stuff was old you want fresh stuff if you get it fresh it should be flexible and it's not gonna crumble and it's not gonna be really difficult to carve so I'm going to use that but there are all kinds of different blocks that you can use this is easy carve even softer really lovely to carve this one I like to use if I'm going to cut out a shape with a scalpel is brilliant you can use soft cut and transparent blocks you can even use sheen apply you'll need some carving tools you might have an entry-level set like this and these are really great these red-handled ones these worked really really well I'm going to mostly use this set here this is Visser I used most often and we use an imprinted studio all the time it's a set of Japanese woodcut and liner cut tools and they're inexpensive and they work really really well so this is a set that I recommend you if you are starting out but you can use all sorts of different kinds I also love to use these file tools and if you've got any of these at home this they're so lovely this is an 11-1 and a 12-1 and which just means it's a tiny view and a tiny v-gouge and I'll show you more what I mean about that later so these work really beautifully there's also flex cut tools and power grips all these different tools will work so dig out what you've got they'll need a roller I've got this and why I handled roll out is a little one here which works really great it's a great addition to your kit or you can use a larger roller and a hard or a soft rubber roll and this one's lovely because it's a little bit softer these work really well Hawthorne bowlers we use in the studio all the time a great speedball ones are great there's no two different kinds you'll need a an ink I've got a Minka here which is a lovely water-based ink I've also got speedball which is a lovely water-based ink both of these are in black got some copper somewhere around here as well which I might use later which is just lovely you can use a safe wash calico ink which is oil-based water washable you can use an oil-based ink I'm gonna use water base today just because I'm in my house and I'm just gonna keep things a little bit cleaner then I would in the studio just self preservation and that you can use any type that you've got you want to relief printing ink a we're not just using your credit paints and things like that we're using a relief printing ink the best results and there are a few extra bits and bobs along the way that you can use to enhance your your piece I'll talk those through as we go but for now I'm going to show you how to make one of these so the first thing I want to do is to draw my design on my liner and this can use a pencil and draw straight on to the liner but you can use blue or red carbon paper to trace your drawing over the top you can use tracing paper to transfer your design wherever you feel comfortable with I'm just going to draw straight onto this because the stakes are low the next step is to decide which areas we want to carve away when we are doing a relief print any raised areas when we roll the ink over the top are going to hold on to the ink and they're going to print if I print in black ink they're going to be black so they're the areas I want to leave behind anything I carve away for example I could carve away the background is going to remain white when you're designing you need to think about which area is going to be black on which areas are going to be white you can print in any color that you like but it's easier to think in terms of black and white when designing and when you're doing a single color Valley print so now when I look at my design I want to think about which areas I want to be carved away and which areas I want to believe behind I would like to carve away my background I'm probably gonna get a little bit of texture in there and a little bit of noise but I don't want it to print a solid black I want this area if the paintbrush to be solid black on both of those I want my handles to be solid black and I think I want these gosh was that part of the paintbrush chord anyway I want this bit yeah I want that to be white with black lines around the edges so I tend to use a tick and a cross system you can shade in any areas that you want to carve or any area so you want to keep some people like to stay in their line I first so you can see where you're working there are lots of different techniques and once you get started and experiment you'll find ones that work for you I'm just going to use this one for now these three are going to be my go-to tools I've got a V tool here you see I've got a V there that's good for creating detail and edges and fine lines and I've got a couple of you tools here you go just got a small one and a large one these are good for carving even channels into the liner and they're also good for clearing areas when you want to carve away at background so these can be really good I also might have a little bit of a go with my file tools the 12:1 here is a really tiny Z and the U is my eleven one really really tiny you when I stop carving a line I cut the first thing I usually do is go around the edges of the main shapes I want to keep so I'm going to go around the edges of both my paintbrushes now you had to hold your layout tool in your hand like this we're not holding it like a pencil we're not going to be able to get enough control so holding in our hands put your finger towards the blade I tend to hold mine quite low but you'll get a feel for how you like to use it so put your finger on the blade like that and this should be in your hand I'm covering with my right hand my left hand is going to stay behind the blade at all times I don't want to be cutting towards my hand because if I slip I get myself a mischief so I'm gonna have my left hand behind and my right hand in front and I'm gonna push it along the line I I'm going around my edges here to carve around my handles and in general you want to turn the lino rather than turning the tool so I want to keep sort of I'm gonna go in generally in this sort of diagonal direction and you're gonna curl turn my line I when I want it to go a different direction so we're skimming the tool over the top of the line a putting a little bit of pressure we shouldn't have to push too hard I like to use this feet all around the edges of my shapes do you thing is a you if you prefer and now I've outlined my hand I'm going to start clear on my background I haven't carved the top of my paintbrushes yet just because I want to use a fine tool to get some interesting texture and then I'm going to leave that for now but I'm going to start to carve out this background because I know I would like that whole background to disappear for that I'm going to use this large u tool I'm going to use this in exactly the same way I'm going to skim over the surface and get it as flat as you can you can get even wider galleries than this to carve out backgrounds called clearing to clear backgrounds really quickly when you ink up your liner you are going to find that any raised areas I've just carved a lot of lines here and you see these Peaks these areas these raised bits are going to pick up some of the ink and that will print some people call that noise some people call it chatter is a characteristic of lino lino printer some people love it and some people hate it you can decide to keep some or not that's completely up to you the flatter you get it the less you will have I like a little bit of chatter as you may have noticed but it's important when you're carving to think about the direction in which you're carving out a background I'm going to carve all this background in this direction along the length of the lining if I was to go a little bit here and a little bit round and do this bit this way and then that bit that way when I threw an eye ink and it picks it up it's gonna pick it up in all sorts of different different directions and it's gonna make it have a lot of noise and be quite confusing whereas I find if you carve in a direction that suits the design in which case this one's quite logical so if I go all vertical around whichever way you choose and then it can complement the design and it'll look much more like you did it on purpose which of course you did so have a think about the direction which you can't this don't just go calling into in any direction if you are doing a design that has a bit more movement than this one this one's very static but if you were to carve birds in the sky for example you're leaving the birds raised and you're carving away the sky I would try and carve in a direction that mimics the movement of the birds through the sky if I've got a bird here and it's flying I'd sort of come in this direction so that if it picked up it would look like swooshing skylines or wind or the bird moving so think about how it complements the design so I've carved out most of my background again I still got the top of my paintbrushes to go you can see here you can see from the light and shadow that I've got a lot of peaks and troughs in my background here these lines here where it's raised are going to pick up ink but if you don't want that you can continue to carve a little though you want to skim off all of those those Peaks sometimes I like to use the chisel that comes in this set to skim off any really raised areas and the flattens out a bit for this design I'm not too fast because I think it will look quite interesting okay so I've just got a little bit lower just to get rid of a few of those peaks and troughs I'm gonna leave now I want to go in and work on the detail I want my handles to stay printing so I'm not going to carve those but I want to carve out these little circles I'm going to use my small u tool to carve out those circles just for the holes in the handles and when you're doing this circles what I like to do is pop my tool in and rotate the line to get a nice circle there what my paintbrush ends I'm gonna try something a little different to the techniques I've showed you before the lovely thing one of the lovely things about this traditional liner is there that you get a snap off and basically what that is is if you dig your tool in and ping it up the liner is going to snap because these pieces are snap a ball if you use something like a soft cut or an easy carve or one of the vinyls Japanese vinyl and they'll carve beautifully but there won't be any snap so when you dig in with your tool you'll have to dig in and come out rather than going in and pinging up and getting a nice little snap I'm gonna take advantage of that characteristic in this liner and I'm gonna use the snap off to cut the top of my brushes I want the tops to be kind of messy and a little bit lunch because these paintbrushes I want them to look super finished as all mine do so I'm just going in and clicking off to get a nice blunt snapped off edge I'm just gonna go back in with my larger you tool and get rid of this bit at the top that I don't want to print I'm now going to go in with my 11-1 file tool and just carve in a little bit more detail on this edge just a fluff it up a bit you can be really precise with all of these tools if that is your style you can really once you've got control over them and got used to them you can be so precise with them but equally as long as you're being safe with your handling of them you can create some really interesting textures and some experimental marks you can really go to town with mark making so if that's your bag then you can really experiment with them there is my fresh paint brush top I'm just gonna do the same to the other side to paint brush tops I want this area to print black and I want this area to put black but I want this bit to be white I want to leave my lines raised so I'm going to use a small tool to carve in between them and then clear these spaces here sometimes if I want a lot of control I'll use my other hand to guide it along the line if I know that I want to control it it sort of helps you apply the brakes and stops it slipping okay so I've cleared these areas here and put in a few lines here I've got the rough tops of my brushes and I've got the handles that I've left alone so this is now going to be ready to ink up just give it one more rubdown to get rid of any bits I've left it kind of rough the carving is kind of rough partly because I think that style will suit the print but also cuz I'm rushing because I'm not usually filming but you can take as much or as little time as you want so now we're ready to ink I want to roll a little bit of ink out on my plate it's gonna put a little blob there use the small roller and roll it out you don't need to roll out an any ink larger than a square made from your roller so this is the same height and width is my roller if I start rolling out and larger squares it's just gonna mean that I'm wasting ink I'm spreading it out more than it needs to go and it's gonna dry faster if you're using a water-based ink it's gonna dry okay so I've got a nice thin coating of ink on my roller usually you should hear a little sound like a little sound and when you're rolling out your ink you don't want it to be thick and tacky you don't want it to be blobby or have drag marks that's too much and I think you can hear the sound of it particularly well on this camera and you're just gonna roll over the top of your print I'm using a small roller here so I'm just going to roll over each brush individually but if you've got a large one just go over the whole lot now I'm picking up a little bit of ink in my background here I'm not too worried about it and nor should you be there I've got a little bit of my background there you can see all the areas that are picked up ink these raised areas have picked up ink where my roller has touch I'm gonna leave them in mind but if you are troubled by it you can get a rag on the end of your finger and wipe it off you can print our relief prints with a press which works beautifully you can also put them by hand let's hold hands burnishing you have your block down the table ink side up and when the paper it goes on top you can use some registration marks to make sure you get in the middle I'm gonna put mine down okay so once it's down be sure you don't smudge it or move it around you can use your hand to take the prints so just rub with your finger prints or the heel of your hand to take your print you can use the spoon which works really nicely for hand banishing a wooden spoon or a metal spoon take her over the back of your print basically whatever it takes to rub all over the back of your design and I'm just printing on normal 80 gram copy paper here because this is my first print it's just a proof I want to see what I've made so I can make adjustments to it it's nice in the lightweight you can use all sorts of different papers but they're in mind if you are hand burnishing like this with your hand or with a baron in better than a spoon you want something relatively thin if it's so thick you're gonna find really tricky to get a nice even layer of ink but I think I've gone over the whole thing and we're about to see peel off your paper to reveal your print okay so I've got my two brushes I'm just a little bit of inking there so that's just a little bit more pressure needed and it's a little bit muffled so I could put a bit more pressure down but that does happen when your hand burnishing sometimes I've got a little bit of chatter in my background but I think it just kind of looks like paint splats from the brushes I'm kind of okay with that as well if it's your first time making you learn a cut print we're really happy to help you drop us a message and we can give you any advice and help troubleshoot and we've got loads of different products available at hand printed or code at UK and we've also got loads of blog posts with instructions and helpful hints and tips for you to have a look through we'd love to see what you're getting up to if you make a line and cut and it's your first one or even if is you 151 we would still like to see it please tell us thank you for watching

Channel: Handprinted

Views: 97,355

Rating: 4.9424553 out of 5

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Id: 2PtUWMojapo

Length: 20min 14sec (1214 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 02 2020