Linocut Art

Each month one of our artists in our Thursday Art Group has the responsibility to lead an activity or topic. Everyone doesn't have to take part if it's something that doesn't appeal, just DYOT (do your own thing). October was my month, so I decided to introduce linocut printing to the group. Many of our group had dabbled with linocut at school, but not since, and were a little suspicious that they wouldn't like it. But everyone cheerfully joined in.
Linocut art has certainly changed over the years. There's nice soft rubbery smooth lino to use now, as opposed to the hard stiff lino that was available. And sharp cutters, colourful water based ink for easy clean up, and lots of choices of paper to print on.
Lino cut is definitely a confusing challenge. Once you have decided on a design, a set of v-shaped carving tools is used to cut a negative image into the lino, and it has to be mirror-image at the same time, hard to keep your brain straight at first. Once the design is carved, the plate is inked, and multiple prints can be taken. Only the uncarved parts will print, the carved parts will not print. Our artists loved it and some wonderful designs were produced.
I've been experimenting with two colour prints of a snow scene. I decided to make two separate linos.... one on the right that would print the sky, and the other that would print the tree branches, leaving unprinted paper for the snow. By creating two printing plates, I can print as many of these winter treescapes as I want.