Woodcut vs. Linocut

hi everybody this video is woodcut versus lino which is better there isn't one that's better they're both great they're both different materials so this video is going to talk about carving techniques for woodcut and carving techniques for leno those of you pretty much have a lot of experience with carving leno so i'm going to talk about the differences and how your working carving method on lino doesn't necessarily translate to the wood and the wood behaves in a different way so it's going to be tips for both you leno cut carvers and you would cut carvers what's better no leno's better they're both they're both good okay i'm gonna go over my gear here just uh to explain so linoleum of course comes unmounted with the burlap on the back but it also comes in blocks or mounted lino so you'd set up registration a little bit differently and if we were printing on an etching press it's much easier using an unmounted block and then the wood that we're using we're using sheena so the prep for sheena is that you should darken the wood it comes and it's this sort of color using diluted sumi wiping it on the block i just use a paper towel you can do whatever darkness that you like i did a little bit of a variation on these i like it light enough so i can very clearly see not only the difference between the carved and uncarved areas but also i can very easily see my marks my drawn marks if you're using the red carbon paper which of course is even lighter than the black a little bit then i try to keep my blocks a little bit lighter so that's the first thing and you want to make sure that they're totally dry before you try to carve also with linoleum a lot of times i don't do any prep except to make sure that it's at right angles and maybe trim it up if it's wonky but it is a good idea to sand it so i just use some 110 regular wood sandpaper and just you know 10 goes across the top that will make it much easier for you to print flats so i recommend that although i don't do it a whole lot of the time myself but i should the other thing that i always do with leno is that i keep it wrapped up so as soon as i buy it if it comes if it's a block like this and it comes you know unwrapped and anything i just use plastic bags from the market and cut them into little pieces so that i can wrap them up the lino cures in the air and it will get slowly more and more brittle so you want to extend the shelf life of this and so i always wrap them up once i've made them and printed them and i'm finished with them i don't worry about that it can cure you know great nice thing about lino is that it's very durable and so on this block which i've used for years as a demo block i have pencil drawing i have sharpie from when i went over my transfer drawing you can you know easily erase any drawing off of here you really don't have to worry about denting or marring the surface it's pretty uh tough stuff it is was flooring so you know gives you some idea sheena is not in that category at all it's very easy to ding or muck up the sheena so once i get the sheena and i am going to use it i unwrap it and i darken it and then once it's all dry i wrap it back up again sometimes with plastic sometimes with like heavy craft paper or even newsprint not really to save it from curing or drying out because the wood will slowly dry also and become very splintery over time but that takes a long time and i notice up here in humboldt that it really isn't a thing up here so you don't have to worry about that so darkening the sheena transferring your drawing i have another handout that talks about transferring in the drawing and everything the other thing that a lot of printmakers do and i don't just because uh i really don't think it's necessary but i thought i'd try it for once and just see and that is this is unmounted lino and i've painted over the whole thing with um diluted acrylic paint just diluted enough so i don't get uh streaks so this is nice and flat and then to transfer the image i could use i could use the red transfer paper from mclean's and it would probably show okay but i thought no be better if i used either this is conti on a piece of tracing paper and i also had some just white chalk chalkboard chalk and so i just used that for my transfer paper so had my drawing here right and then i just slipped this underneath and then once i had the chalk on there which was very easy to see i actually went over it with a metallic pen which is this gold here so that i could see it and the reason people do this is you can see my carved marks are very dramatic and they really show um i've gotten so used to just the more subtle way that the uncarved marks are are lighter i mean sorry the carve marks are lighter than the darker mark but i have to say you know it's very dramatic and it's kind of fun carving like this before you print if i was printing in black i probably would just leave the block as it is and ink it up in black but uh i you know i'm not sure but i'm pretty sure this would come off with warm water and comet or ajax or something like that and then trying to keep this as dry as possible and maybe would do it on some paper towels and then i would dry this under some weights so it's nice and flat before i try to print it another thing that i've always completely argued against and been absolutely uh very vocal about how awful i think it is and i still think it's kind of awful but i thought i have a bunch of these uh these are sheena grab bag pieces you can get from mclean's and they're really inexpensive and i thought okay i will sacrifice one of those and i actually painted the acrylic paint on here and i did the same thing i transferred the image using i think the conte paper and then went over it with again my metallic pens that i have so that i can see it and then i started carving so i have to say uh especially on camera this is really dramatic you can really see what i'm doing i also found that in some sort of weird benefits i think with the lino there really isn't any benefit i mean the yeah i didn't notice any real difference in how it carved or anything however in the sheena having that acrylic layer on top does definitely cut down on the splintering of the wood now how i'm going to get it off of there before i print i'm really not sure uh maybe i have to sand it really lightly i can't really scrub it with ajax i don't want to do that to the wood or it'll puff up so i'm not really sure but it's a test and it's weird to carve through because you're carving through that layer of plastic acrylic so it's an experiment always willing to try it okay more of my gear snacks very important i also have some vet wrap and i wrap these around my carving tools the ones that have handles like this they're very slippery in my hands so i like that it it makes it easier to hold on to and these tools are very squared off these get very grungy so they cushion it and make it so i can carve for a much longer amount of time this you find at a animal store pet store the linoleum carving tools because i hold them way up down here this can actually get very abrasive on your hands so sometimes i put vet wrap around these just thought i'd show you these wooden ones you may not have ever seen these before these two are really special to me because these belong to my dad and my uncle and they used them back in the late 50s early 60s so they're very special to me however i have found two other ones these are more thrashed so sometimes you find them in thrift stores or you know collectible stores these are really great and i highly recommend them notice that they're smaller they're a little bit smaller they're a little bit shorter and the circumference right here is a little bit less so for my smaller hands they just have a really nice grip so if you ever find them i highly recommend that you grab those other things i have this is a feel linoleum carving tool these are really beautiful swiss tools i have just this one i personally don't like this kind of tool because it's really meant to be held like this and um that's kind of not how i hold a tool or feel most comfortable holding a tool for carving but these are excellent excellent tools these of course are tools from mclean's they're all from japan other things that i have i have a stiff wired brush this i've had forever but even a little stencil brush this is really handy to clear your block of all the little schmutz that you've carved even as you're carving or definitely before you go to print if you bought tools from the claims they probably came with this tubing around them to protect them just so you know you can buy more of this at the hardware store buy it by the foot if you want any more of that also i have my x-acto knife so i'm going to show you how you can carve especially on the wood with the x-acto knife and that i learned from one of my mentors a couple other things that i have this is a non-skid pad i have this on the material list for you guys you can find rolls of this it's a shelf liner sort of rubbery plastic stuff really great to secure your piece of wood not really secure it but keep it from sliding around and really help you hold on to your block while you're carving those are really great and then the other thing is when i get ready to carve i tape up my hand this might sound really silly and i guess it is but it's you know it's like what athletes do right but i've found that because of the way i hold my tools sort of like using a pencil i really push against this finger and also as i'm holding my hand i tend to use my pinky as kind of like a stabilizer and a lot of of carving especially on a big block for my hands up on the block the wood can kind of be owie on my finger so i always do that i also have these um arthritis craft gloves which are um kind of great they're compression gloves you can find them i've seen them at joann fabrics notice my right hand one is definitely more used than my other one i find these help a lot when i'm carving especially like a full day of carving they just really really help okay so um that's basically my stuff except one other thing i am sitting on a very squeaky sorry uh but adjustable chair so i adjust my chair so my table is as high as possible um that way i'm not bending over too much another option is these are my special literally i've been using these for 25 years these two books these are my super duper special bring my block up so i don't hurt my back blocks so these are just the right size or height i should say so that i can rest my elbows on the table and carve like this and they really help me quite a bit so if you can't adjust your chair or find a chair table combo that gets you closer your back and neck will be happy for that maybe find even just one book that you're putting it up on to get closer here magnifying i always wear reading glasses i'm of that age where i definitely need to do that so that's something to think about also the last and probably the most important thing is build in somehow that you're taking breaks on a regular basis set your phone for 20 minute 30 minute intervals or something and at the end of that time get up stretch look into the distance go walk around a little bit even if it's just for five minutes or something and then come back and carve again when you're carving a large block you guys are carving six by eight which is not too huge i mean it's about like that big a little bigger um you know you want to have even and consistent carving across the whole block you don't want one block to look like it got all your close attention and then the other part looks really rushed you want to have a nice control and consistency across the whole thing you also don't normally when you're carving start at one end and then just you know go to the other end i think it's better to jump around especially if you don't have a fully realized plan for how you're going to balance all your carving so like for both of these how i started them i had a pretty clear idea of how i wanted the thumb to look and then i'm just kind of jumping around and moving out from that center part usually i have a pretty good idea of one part of my drawing like with this one i knew kind of established what these were going to be pretty early on and then i moved out from there another very important thing when you're figuring out where you're going to carve is lighting and light now i have my table turned this way away from the window because it's better and works better for the filming normally i have this so the windows right in front of me that gives me raking light across my block which is really good i also have this right desk lamp and when i'm carving i sometimes have it like this again so it's raking light and it really highlights the carved mark so i can see what i'm doing the other thing i do too and this is has as much to do with age as anything else is i can't carve at night anymore i need so much light otherwise i my eyes just really get strained so um you know think about working and having being close to a window and another thing i just want to say too is that the window over here doesn't really work for me because i'm right-handed right so as i'm carving my hand's going to be casting a shadow from the window so this normally would not be a good setup and again that's why i have this drafting lamp here to help the main difference with linoleum from wood is the grain or the lack of grain lino doesn't have any grain and there's pretty much no structure to it i mean that's why it's got the burlap on the back so you can cut very freely in any direction there's no resistance when you carve one way compared to another one woodcut of course has a grain and it is a natural material so you may find that when you hit a certain spot it might have a little bit of a different quality it might be a little bit more brittle a little harder i mean sheena is beautiful so there's not much difference but you still might hit sections that carve a little bit differently and you might need to adjust your carving style accordingly um sorry get distracted there okay so um what used to always be said then is that you could tell a leno print because it had more fluid um curving sort of carved marks maybe but you know you can carve curving sort of carved marks in a wood cut too so it just depends on the material depends uh the style of the carver as i was sort of saying before it's like i really don't think i carve the material differently i do it the same it's just the material responds a little bit differently okay so just some basic things here that when you're carving a wood cut and you're going with the grain it will be a little bit easier to carve and when you're carving against the grain it's a little louder you hear this kind of thing also if you're using especially a larger tool let's see if i can get this to happen and you're going deep see how this splintered on the edge much better when you have a mark off the edge that you come in from the edge and that way i didn't get any splintering on the edge of the material very similar kind of thing happens with leno that if i come off the edge of material with my tool buried fairly deep i get some chipping of the material on the end so for instance the lino sort of does that on the end whereas the wood um kind of did this and then splintered like a long sort of piece off the edge like that so you know be careful about that either material um you want to come in off the edge and then you can have a uh you can avoid that but or sometimes what i do like i'm doing here is i sort of come up and be a little bit more shallow right when i hit that edge and it can minimize that happening so that's something to pay attention with on the edges of the marks edges of the blocks basic stuff there are you gouges and there are v gouges the linoleum carving tools are very what i call a soft v they're more like oops they're more like you know like that rather than like that um the wood carving tools are definitely a very sharp v at the bottom they will of course give you different sorts of marks um the v tool is meant to be two knives two knives put together and it puts them at an angle so you you know think of it with a knife you carve this side this side well the v-carve tool does that for you and you get that nice really crisp sharp sort of carved mark with a v gouge what the v gouge doesn't do quite as well or actually what i think is a way to think of is it does it really well is you could use it for doing sharp turns and it's gonna kind of kick up the material in a more uneven sort of way and i think that's oh this one's a pretty dull okay move on from that this is also a v gouge this is like a one and a half millimeter much smaller you can see just really crisp kind of sharp marks with a v gouge basically if you're carving with a v gouge you end up with a mark that looks like this like it tapers on both ends like that is it compared to a u-gouge where you get a mark of it sort of looks like that or you can put the u gouge in and then stop and you get a mark sort of like that so if i come over here from here and i carve i can stop and then i get a flat sort of edge or i can come in and go back out again and i get more of a rounded sort of taper same thing happens on the lino but on the lino uh that like when you do a hard stop and then lift the material off depending but it's a little bit of a softer sort of mark than when you do it on the wood because when you do it on the wood you're hitting well actually if you're going um against the grain you hit up with the grain and you get this really crisp sort of edge what i was doing over there is i was going i'm sorry let me say that again if you're going against the grain you stop like along the edge and you get a really crisp mark if you're going with the grain a lot of times you get these little wood pigtails and if you try to take them off you get a little bit more of a jagged sort of mark so to get that really crisp kind of mark you want to go with the grain the other thing is of course you could do this and you could come in the other way to make a mark like this or just come in and back out again and have a similar tapers on both sides so when when you're covering the wood you can use the grain to do your work for you in a way that you kind of can't with linen so on these blocks i've made some distorted grids on here that i want to carve now i could carve them with a a little v u ish gouge and i would probably come in from each corner to try to get the crispest crispest sort of corners like that like using the little bottom of this v gauge to give me these precise little edges i could do the same thing this is a one millimeter u gouge for the wood cut but i'm not really getting really precise corners here because the tool is larger than these little precise corners so what would be better is if i used a v gouge which of course has this really sharp these are so hard to hold this sharp corner and i could come in do each corner so i get that really crisp corner in the curve or along the edge and that's better i get a little bit more of crisp corners on there um but really the easiest thing to do especially with the wood is to use an x-acto knife so think of this as um as a knife right um and one thing that roxanne used to tell me to do or i've seen other people tell me to do this i think is take some pliers and actually just snip off that very delicate last little edge there what i do is just make sure that if that does snap off into my wood then i'm sure to get it out of that wood so that you know when i do this i'm not slicing my hand open or you know ruining a roller when i try to ink it up so i'm going to hold this a little bit of an angle so i'm not under cutting and i can just go right in like this to establish the edge and then in wood i could just go in and pop it out and it's just going to make this extremely consistent perfect little grid so for small little marks like that i use the knife or the yeah the x-acto knife i also cut this section right here is with the x-acto knife so anytime i have really small marks that i want to be really precise or inside corners i use the exacto you can do the same thing on leno again be sure i'm angling away from the material that i don't want to cut but when i go in i can't do exactly the same sort of it's not as easy to pop out as it is with the wood cut i can kind of do it but it's more like i have to crumble it out so i can just go in not as easy but i can slowly come on i know there we go pop that out and get a nice um really sharp corners on that so to do some sort of checker board it's great but also any sort of inside corner so on this block it's the same kind of thing these marks right here i used the exacto one so i could get that precise thing here if i want to cut this i could go in like this and then to clear it because it's larger than just those little um those little squares i could come in with a u gouge and then have it pop off those edges from there and the really great again thing about wood is that uh it will pop right off along that line that i cut which is really great there we go so one thing that's uh or not one thing i say that a lot another thing that is very important is that we've got our u gouges and we've got v gouges say so you gouges and v gouges difference between the japanese tools and the linoleum carving tools say is these are more shallow so the japanese carving tools are going to be more like this or more like this whereas the american tools and the lino carving tools are more like this so that means that when you carve these using these different tools and say i want to make a carve you know where i bury the tool about that much that's fine but in a japanese tool if you're burying it this much right where you've got these leading edges of the you gouge you're going to get splintering along the wood on those angles this you have more room here right you can carve quite deep with the american tools or the luna tools which have very deep sort of used to them or v's to them another thing always another thing is that i'm right-handed i tend to turn the tools this way towards myself a little bit i try not to i try to use them straight up and down but if i pivot this towards myself i might be burying this lead edge a little bit in which case it's very hard to not get a really jagged oh this one's nice and sharp so i'm getting good curving marks but it's very hard to not get a really jagged edge along that area so in general you need to carve more shallow with the japanese tools or the wood carving tools from japan but that doesn't mean that you can't carve deeply it just means that you have to start with rather shallow marks and then slowly make it make it deeper very often i've got a slip so i've got to work it in when i'm starting to outline something an image on my board i'm usually using the number one millimeter in woodcut or i'm using the number one tool in lino because i want a very thin sort of edge and i will more than likely go back in and make that white outline larger have more character but i usually start with just that white edge because often that white edge then gets carved into and it becomes my background so it in effect uh get that edge the further edge gets broken down and it just becomes part of my background okay but what if i have an image like this the easiest most consistent way to get a good circle is notice my right hand isn't moving at all i've planted the tool and now i'm twirling the block that's not really perfect uh let's do this so it'll spin easier plant the tool just holding it and pushing with consistent pressure and rotating the block be really careful again that you're not burying the tool like with this notice i'm holding this at a higher angle i'm getting much more of a jagged kind of outline so i'm keeping it at this kind of halfway up the side of the the u gouge okay but what if this circle is in the middle of a field of white or a field that i've almost carved everything away around it and so it's going to need to get deeper so that nothing prints around it well i could establish that outline with that tool and then i come in with another tool and then just slowly go over it and work it until it's as deep as i need it to be for small areas say for instance this shape right here it doesn't have to be that deep in order to be completely white so it isn't uh it's a question of how wide it is and how deep it is so it has to be able to support the brayer over that length and be able to support the paper over that length uh in order to be white if you're doing a block like this one where i have quite a lot of area here where i do not want it to print i have to carve pretty deeply on here to make sure that it doesn't print a lot of what you end up doing with your carving is what i call cleanup so for instance i established this edge here but i can see there's still little ridge right along the edge from some material that's like hanging out right along that edge so i have to go back in and i want to clean that otherwise it's going to print as a small little mark that's right next to my uh that edge of that black shape on there one thing i like to do with the linoleum tools in particular is you can place them in the material and jiggle them back and forth so it sort of makes this a rick rickrack kind of mark which can be cool give you a very different sort of texture you can of course make small marks that all are unidirectional and they could start to create a texture or a tone in your work you can also do hatching or cross hatching so this would end up being the opposite of this so this by carving out in between my uh gel pen there i'm going to get black lines with white grid spaces here i'm getting white lines with black grid spaces so it's fun to shift back and forth and have different areas changing direction changing the scale all these ways are ways that you can establish the edges of things and establish whether something has a three-dimensional sort of quality what the surface is like a lot of times when you have areas of your print where you've cleared but you've left material like i've left some material in here that i specifically want to print and there's some material in here and and it can be difficult to judge what that looks like until you print it same here i've left some random little marks in here and i'm going to wait until i print it to see whether i want to clear that further or whether i like having a little bit of that tone in there can't put the material back so i always try to err on the side of carving a little bit less than i think i might want so that i can adjust after i proof and after i see what it looks like printed some of the most beautiful marks and looking at other people's prints is always a good thing is doing combinations of marks so for instance if you come in and make a line and then you want to add a different sort of character to it this is a much larger u gouge you could come in and you're going to have to come in and see how those won't really disconnect so i could come in and cut come on right so you could combine marks i made the line and then here i'm coming in again with that one millimeter u gouge so i have you know a compound sort of line has a different sort of quality to it so every mark you carve is white and that's what you're doing you're removing the material and so a lot of people say that it's you know you're doing the opposite you're removing the whites and leaving the um the material to be the blacks and the prints why is this slipping so much sometimes with uh oops now i'm using the wood carving tool sometimes with the linoleum you'll hit a spot which is really brittle too so i mean even though it doesn't happen as often but that can happen too i lost my chain of thought okay so with lino it's uh pretty easy to control and keep the tool in the same depth and notice i'm even like moving the block and then keep going but if you're just learning and just starting out or you feel like you don't have a control it's a lot better to just carve maybe half an inch uh you know and not get too far out with the tool so that you have control over the marks that you're making notice the way that i hold the tool so i do hold it like a pencil and i tend to hold it in this kind of position with a block even with a small block like this i can hold this in my hand like this and then i use this finger sometimes both as stops on my tools so i'm pushing with my whole arm here and then this is a break so um so every time i set my hands down i've made this unit that can move around and every time i carve my right hand is basically in the same position i'm moving the block around so i can make some different marks but basically i'm keeping my right hand in the same place and so that is just efficient that rotating the block around so you're always carving in the same direction is good rather than trying to i don't know of this way that's not that doesn't really work it's like you want to carve if you're right-handed you want to carve you know counterclockwise is a lot easier than curving the other direction i mean you can but i tend to hold my hands differently so that i can see what i'm doing when i go clockwise but i find it's much more comfortable for me to carve anti-clockwise as the brits say i hope these tips have helped i hope you feel a little more confident with jumping in on trying woodcut or carving your lino um one last tip do a check-in self-check how tired are you how agitated are you how calm are you how rested are you when there's areas of your block that are more important than others or more detailed something like that i uh approach those when i am rested right and there's always some areas on a block maybe in this case it would be the background i don't know where it's a little less intense in terms of my concentration and i can move more quickly through those areas so i often move around based on concentration level too like work really tight or or areas where i know i have to be real controlled in my carving and then i can give myself a rest and do some of the easier parts and move back and forth so i hope these tips help good luck with your carving oh did you did you decide whether woodcutter lena cut is best no i haven't decided either

Channel: Sarah Whorf

Views: 4,597

Rating: 4.96875 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, printmaking, relief printmakingm, wood carving tools, sharpening wood carving tools

Id: oKpmt0y5RHI

Length: 41min 21sec (2481 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020