Linocuts
As I am hoping to do clusters of different farm animals in my degree show, I decided to do more lino cuts of different animals including a chicken and a goat. I tried to use a range of the lino cutting tools for variations of marks and detail. As soon as I get a range of prints, both black and white and colour explorations, I hope to work into these more to develop them further.
Chicken linocut:
This was the chicken lino cut which I did. Focusing on just the head of the chicken was a good idea to give variation from the other chicken paintings I’ve done. I tried to keep it quite simple but wanted variation in the thickness of the lines cut out. I found the thicker line was hard to control and I sometimes very easily cut too deep into the lino creating a horrible texture and feeling like I was damaging the lino. I tried my best to avoid this but I can only get better with practice. Overall I love the design of this lino cut and I like its simplicity yet its varied line. I look forward to seeing what this lino cut looks like printed.
I did a rubbing of the linocut to see what it would look like by using a piece of lined paper, which was all I had on me at the time and a pencil and rubbing over the linocut. Although this wasn’t a perfect execution, I feel that it helped me get a sense of what if would look like printed.
Goat Linocut:
This is the goat linocut I did using different line thicknesses for the goat and the enclosure. In this example the mess up of the thicker lines of the enclosure is more obvious and I wish I could rectify this somehow. Though I tried to build detail using repeated lines, I feel this linocut is really simple and I will definitely work onto it more soon to build it up and make it look better.
Lino Prints
To print my linocuts I used a roller, some water based printing ink and a range of white papers. Applying the right amount of ink isn’t always straight forward but once I get the hang of it, it is an enjoyable process and very satisfying. I have ordered some coloured inks to work with and I look forward to seeing the different effects I can achieve in the future.
Chicken Lino prints:
These are the chicken lino prints I did as a collective. I didn’t want to do too many as the black ink can be quite limiting but I am hoping to work over these prints with pastels or crayons to incorporate colour which is vital for my project. Overall I’m really happy with the design but feel that I could do something with the background to make the chicken stand out more. I also need to add the enclosure but I will do that later on.
Here is a better picture of each chicken lino print. I feel that the two prints on the right side had the best outcome as the other four are quite faded due to not enough ink being applied. Though this could create a cool effect with coloured inks, I feel that the block effect is the most effective for the black and white prints. However, this doesn’t matter too much as I will be working over these black and white prints to incorporate more colour and make them fit in more with my project. I really like the design of this lino cut and how simple yet detailed it is.
Goat Lino Prints:
These are the goat l prints I did photographed together. The two prints on the left were the most effective in terms of ink application. I feel that the general design definitely needs to be worked on more as I feel that it is lacking a great deal in comparison with the chicken lino print.
These are the individual prints and I love how crisp the lines are. I hope working over these will give me insight into how to improve and make me see the positives of these prints. Adding some mark making and pattern could be interesting but I worry that I will overdo it and make the print worse but it’s a matter of trial and error and I can always do another goat linocut if the worst case does happen.