Relief printing process…

Kelsey introduced me to relief printing (or “linocut” printing as we always refer to it as, even though it’s really only linocut if you’re using actual linoleum…) a few years back when we decided to send out Christmas cards to our families. The idea was it would be a fun little craft as a way to make something quickish, replicable, and handmade. Basically, you’re using small hand tools to carve out a stamp from a block of rubber so that you can use it over and over again. My first kick at the can showed my immense intellectual abilities when I forgot that when you’re making a stamp, you’re reflecting the print… “Merry Xmas” turned to “smaX yrreM”... *facepalm*

A few years go by, I decide to give it another try, and after some messy attempts at mushrooms and chameleons and whatever else, I ended up with a half-decent print of a can of fish… I was inspired to carve away “Portuguese Sardines” after a trip to a Spanish restaurant in Vancouver for one of Kelsey’s bdays - Como Taperia. At Como, some of the dishes are presented with seafood still in the can. We found ourselves pleasantly surprised by the intense flavours canned seafood can bring…

More recently, I finished working on a print called “Parlour”, inspired in part by the room set aside in good sized houses for hosting guests. I grew up in a home that was finished being built in the late 1860s by my ancestors. The parlour was never really used for that purpose during my lifetime, so I really just wanted to craft a cozy fireplace and some weird artifacts that could convey a couple of ounces of personality from whoever the made-up homeowners might be. An open fireplace, some kid’s trophy for who knows what on the mantle, a vaguely political portrait of some state politician, and one of those fly-by airplane photos they try to sell rural property owners of their homes door-to-door. 

But anyway - I wanted to show the process I’ve sort of settled on for the past while. What I tend to do is sketch out a number of small sketches (about 2” x 2”) on dot grid, see which ones I’m drawn to, then draw them larger (about 4” x 4”), making tweaks on composition or elements. Since I use the grid, I’m then able to scale up or down by manually transferring a grid onto the print block. I then carve away all of the sections I’d like to appear as white with small hand-tools. Once that’s done, I ink the block, press down real hard on the back of the paper, and hope to jeepers I didn’t add too much or too little ink (I still haven’t really gotten the hang of this - only about half of my prints are keepers right now…). Of the 13 I printed, I’ve culled it down to five that I’m happy with, which made one for myself and a limited run of four for you.

Anyway, that’s the basic process. Oh - and by the way! Have you found the hidden linocut print I made on the page linked here?