Learning objectives
- What is linocutting?
- Understand the basic tools
- Practise four ways of creating prints
Many of us can recollect trying out linocut at school — maybe you have memories of rockhard lino and blunt tools; perhaps there was even an injury or two. When some of my students reminisce about their first memories of linocut, which so often involve cuts and blood, I’m amazed they want to try again!
Simply put, linocut is a type of relief printmaking, meaning that the ink remains on the surface and everything you carve away remains white. It is a negative mark-making technique, in that you are removing rather than adding, and what you leave behind gives you your image.
First of all, a design is created and then transferred to lino, either by tracing or drawing directly. Linocutting tools are then used to carve away at the design,
