Lino Print - The Finished Piece

Its been a while since I've posted and even longer since I originally started working on the Manchester United print. Last May I finished the Manchester United print which resulted in me having about 20 prints of the Manchester United Crest. I used a combination of these prints to produce the following piece:

Lino Printing - Pop Art Giraffe

Its been a while since I've posted! Not done any lino prints since I last posted but I did come across a print on the Internet that I think is interesting. Its a pop art print of a giraffe, similar to my giraffe print except using 4 colours and more detail. Check it out here -

Pop Art Giraffe

That's all for now

Lino Printing - Giraffe

Now that I've completed the Manchester united print I decided to try the do a print using the sketch of a giraffe that i posted earlier.
Here is the sketch of the giraffe and the sketch transferred to some tracing paper.

The following two images show the outline of the giraffe on the lino block along with the block after the first cut.

This time around I decided to do two prints, one on white paper and one (a double print) on black paper. I also decided to keep things simple and print with two colours. Here are the resulting prints -

Lino Printing - The Final Print

Its been a while since my last update but I've completed the last print. So I'll talk through the process for this print. This is going to be a short enough post as I'm basically repeating the process for the 3rd time. As usual I spread the paint out and used the rolled it out to get an even layer on the roller.


At this point I rolled the paint onto the lino block.



Here is the collection of completed prints.

Lino Cutting - Carving the third and final print

Its time to carve the lino block for the third and final print. The plan was to carve around the crest on the lino block leaving an outline which I will print using black paint. I didn't sketch the areas to cut onto the lino block, I just started carving. I was really just removing some of the lino block to leave the outline of the image.

Here you can see I've started carving the third print. I've left the outline of the text on the base of the crest.

I've took a close up picture to show me carving the text on the top of the crest.

It took me about 4 hours to carve the third print as there was lots of small areas to be carved so it was a slow process. Almost there...

And finally complete.

Now I'm ready to do the final print but I don't have the time right now so it will have to wait until another day.

Lino Printing - The Second Lino Print

I've just completed the second print using red paint. I realise now that I should have done some prints in different colours to experiment a little bit but I've decided to continue as planned with my 3 colour print - yellow, red and black.

As you can see from the two pictures below I put some paint down on the plastic sheet and then rolled it out until it was evenly spread.


Some people spread the paint out with a palette knife, but I find my approach works out OK. Although it takes a bit of rolling to get a nice even spread. The following picture shows my lino block after I have rolled it with paint. There are a couple of areas around the outside of the crest that picked up some paint. This is partly due to my efforts rolling but also these areas were not carved as deep as some of the others.


Once again I used a rolling pin to apply pressure to the page after I had placed it on the lino block. The following few pictures show the print as it was peeled away from the lino block.




I continued with the above process using all of the prints that I had created with the first lino cut. As I explained earlier I didn't experiment with different colours but I did experiment with different amounts of paint on the lino block. Producing prints with faint colours and producing prints with strong colours. Here is a pictures of the completed prints.


So one print left to do, that will be a black print. Basically giving an outline to the crest.

Lino Cutting - Carving the Second Print (Part 2)

I've finished carving the lino block for the second print. Don't have too much to say about it basically continued in the same manner as the previous day. The footballs were a bit tricky as they were very small areas to be carved. Here is a picture of the completed carving.

The following image shows the inner part of the crest and the devil. I found some of this carving to be quite difficult especially the small areas.


Here is another image showing the detail on the top half of the crest. You can also see the slightly modified design of the football.


That's all for today. My next update should be of the second print in red.