Block Print in Progress

“Change: Inspired by a Visit to an English Abbey in 1989” : 4”x6” linoleum block print on 6.5”x8.5” mulberry paper, 2023

Recently I had the last of four sessions on linoleum block printing at the South County Art Association with Jill Heffernan and six or so other artists. Jill emphasized the ability to create prints at home without a press and with relatively inexpensive materials including water-soluble inks. She gave us a list of materials to bring to the first session, including about five 4”x6” linoleum blocks (when I ordered five from Blick they sent me 30!), mulberry paper, inks, a wooden spoon to use as a baren, etc.

I thought, great, I love this size — I haven’t done artwork this small ever.

People came to the class with all manner of blocks. There is traditional linoleum, “unmounted” with a burlap-ish backing. There is traditional linoleum mounted on a wood block to provide a type-high printing surface compatible with letterpress printing. People nowadays also use even softer materials to carve — a couple of people in the class brought in blocks that are near the color and consistency of pink erasers. Others brought in unappealing squishy gray (rubber?) blocks that I suppose are easy to carve.

Linoleum block printing, like letterpress, woodblock printing, and potato printing, is a relief-printing process, which is to say the high part of the printing plate is what gets inked up. The ink transfers to the paper with pressure, which could be from an etching press, a letterpress, a baren, a wooden spoon, or maybe even just your palm. The part of the block that you carve away — the low part — is not inked and therefore remains the color of the paper after printing. It can be confusing sorting out what is positive and negative space when working on a block. There are various strategies you can use to avoid the confusion, some of them involving a sharpie.

(Other printmaking processes are NOT relief-printing: with intaglio — etching, mezzotint, aquatint, drypoint — ink is rubbed into indentations in the plate — the low parts — and wiped away from the high surface, before damp paper is pressed into the inked part using an etching press; planographic processes are so-called because the ink and the uninked parts of the plate are all on the same plane — this applies to lithography, which relies on the antipathy of oil and water, and serigraphy, or screenprinting, which involves stencils. There. There is my one-paragraph mansplanation of the main classifications of printmaking. Glad I got that off my chest.)

Jill did a demo of using the etching press at the SCAA for linocut prints, but she also averred that more control of the impression may be achieved by using the wooden spoon or the baren to press the paper onto the block and peeling back corners of the paper as you go to check the progress of transfer of ink from plate to paper. It’s more labor-intensive than using a press, but having that extra bit of control is great, and not having to own a press in your home studio is also great.

The stark black-on-white of one-color woodblock and linoleum printing has an appealing graphic aesthetic, but of course it’s possible to use multiple plates — or one plate in reductive states, or a ‘jigsaw’ plate — to produce a multicolor print with different colors registered on the paper. As in traditional Japanese woodblock prints, or Picasso’s reduction prints, or Edvard Munch’s woodcuts. Christina Taylor of the Harvard Art Museums has a wonderful demo of Picasso’s technique on YouTube. There are many other great how-to videos on Youtube, including this nice clear intro in a British accent that I quite liked. If you want to dig deeper, there are many, many other fine printmakers on YouTube, and one of the SCAA workshop participants recommended this book: Linocut: A Creative Guide to Making Beautiful Prints, by Sam Marshall.

I wanted to do something simple in the sessions at SCAA, hence the design above, alongside the verbal reminder to myself not to get stuck. Sometimes I seem to forget that all of reality is changing all the time. What you see above is a first pass. The final prints are intended to be two colors, like the terracotta tiles on the floor of that English abbey. Stay tuned.

Thank you, Jill, for inspiring me to continue at home with this simple yet rewarding printmaking process.

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