I’d really enjoyed creating a linoprint last year when I was working at Harbourfront Centre, and had been thinking of buying some supplies and trying it out again in a slightly less rushed situation. While I was home a month or two ago, my mom and sisters and I went to an auction, where I was lucky enough to snag a box full of linocutting supplies – carving tools and breyers, some (very old) ink and lino.
This past weekend I finally made it an art supply store, and picked up some fresh ink and some of the newer, rubbery lino. I sketched out an octopus and transferred it to the lino. Unfortunately, I find that this rubbery lino is a difficult medium – it’s not so bad if you’re using it to carve lines, but if you’re carving away a lot of material, it becomes quite annoying. I probably just need to work with it more, and learn how to work with the medium instead of struggling against it.
In the end, this turned out much better than I thought it was going to, but I’m still annoyed but a few things – the octopus’ highest tentacle didn’t turn out right, even in the sketch, and a lot of the lines aren’t very clean. I also don’t quite have the printing technique down, so I’m not getting a very clean print.
I may do some more work on the linocut, to see if I can clean it up and make it something that i’m happier with, and I may add some elements to the final prints with a pen or some other inks. We’ll see.
For now, here’s my octopus!
