Since taking a print making class at uni last semester, I've become a bit obsessed with printing. My particular favourite technique is relief printing - carving into lino or wood to make a design, then covering the surface with ink and making a print onto paper. I really liked making woodcuts as I found that the harder surface, with more resistance, gave more precise marks with my carving tools and a cleaner print. Lino is fun too, and if you buy an easy-carve type. you can easily and quickly make simple designs. At uni we used industrial presses to transfer the ink on the design cleanly onto paper, but similar results can be achieved at home - I have a Japanese bamboo baren that I use to apply pressure onto larger wood/lino cuts.

If you make a lot of relief prints, this tutorial will probably seem like a really hack version of print making for you - but my main aim was just to introduce the idea of lino cuts to those who mightn't have gotten to make them before. If you have any tips to share, do comment!



I made a bunch of prints with different designs for this subject, some with hand-drawing lettering, all with a Beatles lyric theme. I've wanted to make my own set of alphabet stamps for a while. I worked out how many letters I could fit onto my piece of lino (I could fit 28 squares - each 3cm x 3.5cm - so 26 letters and 2 left over squares, it's good to have leftovers incase you make a mistake). Alternatively you could cut out half this amount and make each stamp double sided. I ruled out lines across my piece of lino, marking them in with a pencil and then carefully cut out the blocks using a sharp utility knife.



Because I wanted the letters to be precise, I decided to use a print out of the letters as a template and not do them freehand (maybe another project). First, I made a large flat black rectangle shape in Photoshop and printed that on one side of a piece of A4 paper with my laser printer. On the other side of the A4 sheet I printed my alphabet (created in Photoshop, making sure that each letter would fit easily within the 3cm x 3.5cm squares). The NUMBER ONE rule of making prints using lettering is to MAKE SURE THAT ALL OF YOUR LETTERS/WORDS ARE CARVED BACKWARDS. I can't stress this enough. I think everyone eventually has an experience of painstakingly carving a lino/wood cut only to realise once you've printed it that your letters/words are the mirror image of what they should be and there's nothing you can do but start again. Massive frustration.




Using a laser printer, the black colour on the paper comes off easily if you rub it - this works well if you want to transfer an image onto another surface. I put each lino square underneath the corresponding letter on the paper and drew over the letter on the paper with a pencil - the letter shape is lightly transfered to the lino through the paper. I then drew over the letter on the lino with my pencil so that the shape to carve would be clearer.




I don't really have any major tips for carving the lino except to practice, be patient and work slowly. I'm definitely no pro. Round shapes are harder to carve than straight lines, but it can be done. When I was first making woodcuts my hands had little cuts all over them from using my tools badly. Always point the blade of the tool away from yourself. It is easy for the tools to slip and for you to ruin your design, take your time and get to know the materials. I wanted my letters to have a black area around them, but you could carve the white area around each letter instead if you prefer. Of course, where you carve will be the white space and where you don't will be what gets inked.



Once my letters were all carved, I applied an amount of ink (about a teaspoon) along the edge of my piece of plastic sheet using my palette knife, then using my roller, rolled the ink out onto the plastic. Don't just roll back and forth - put your roller into the ink, pick it up, let it spin, then roll it back, and repeat until the ink covers the plastic sheet evenly. At uni we were taught to 'listen to the ink' as you're rolling it and you'll know when there's too little or too much ink on the plastic sheet, I love the hiss it makes - otherwise, do a test print with an amount of ink on your lino to get an idea of whether you need to apply more ink. Always use less ink than you need, you can always add more.



Once you've got a good amount of ink coverage on your lino cut, you just press the lino cut onto paper. You'll need to apply a lot of pressure so that the ink is evenly transferred - if you've made a print that is larger than my tiny blocks, using a baren to apply pressure might work better than just using your hands. If you've applied too much ink, the lino can move around a bit and smudge the ink. When using a press at uni, I would usually place my print on top of my inked wood/lino cut before rolling it through the press, but when I have small pieces of lino, I find it much easier to do it the other way around. I do kind of like the sketchy, imperfect quality of hand pressed prints though (like below).




If you're a cheapskate thrifty like me, once you're done you'll scrape the remaining ink from your tools off with your knife and put it back in your ink pot. Afterwards, try to remove the remaining ink from your tools and lino cuts by dampening some paper towel and rubbing the ink off and then putting the paper towel in the bin, rather than washing the ink straight down the drain.



Tools I use:
+ Easy-carve lino (I used a 14cm x 22cm block)
+ A stanley knife
+ Lino cutting tools (especially the small V shaped tool for making precise cuts)
+ A hard rubber paint roller (not the soft foam sort)
+ Block printing ink (as these are often expensive, you can buy a block ink medium extender to add to good quality acrylic paints to make them the right viscosity for making block prints)
+ A palette knife (I have a small plastic one, but an ordinary plastic knife can do the job)
+ A piece of thick, flat plastic for rolling paint on (you can buy these, but I use a piece of flat clear plastic packaging I found, you could also use a flat piece of glass or metal).




Happy print making!

If you follow me via social media you'll know that last week while I was on holiday in Melbourne my cat Morrissey died. A friend of ours was minding our house/cats, and Morrissey, being forever the wanderer, was hit by a car two streets from our house.


I got a phone call from a stranger at 8am who had seen him on the side of the road and called my number, having seen it on his collar tag. She stayed there with him until my father in law could come pick his body up, even though it made her late for work, because she said she had a cat of her own and she knew she'd appreciate the same kind of care for him in that situation. I've since discovered that we have some mutual friends and I'd like to send her a thank you card.


Morrissey was my first cat and he was very special to me. I paid ten dollars for him to a man who looked kind of Amish and he was probably only about four weeks old when we got him. He was very headstrong and loved to explore and it was impossible to keep him locked up for long - he was feisty and always got what he wanted. C had hoped we'd be able to move out to the country in the next year or two, where Morrissey could go for long walks and explore more safely.


He rarely caught animals, but the day before we left he caught a bird and ran through the house with it, then a few hours later, he caught a rat and ran through the house with it ("Oh, you didn't like the bird I caught you? How about this rat?!"). After disposing of their corpses, we locked him in the laundry for an hour as punishment (I was actually kind of impressed) but reconciled before we left the next morning.



He was a very charming cat with a lot of personality and my heart feels sore thinking about him. C's dad buried him in our yard while we were on holidays and kept his collar for us. I'd like to plant flowers on his grave and make a little plaque.




Morrissey liked:
+ Suckling on C's t-shirts until he left big cat spit marks around the neck
+ Spooning with and grooming our other little cat Dexter
+ Exploring, especially other people's gardens
+ Fake meat
+ Sleeping between us in bed with his head on the pillow
+ Sitting on windowsills
+ Making high pitched screaming noises (he didn't meow, he screamed)
+ Making friends
+ Laying in the sun

Some of my favourite posts about Morrissey:
+ This Charming Cat
+ Morrissey's Photos Pt. 1
+ Morrissey's Photos Pt. 2
+ List: Things That Morrissey Does
+ My Cat, The Artist

01 Arranging comfy little spaces in my house (see above).
02 The patterns inside envelopes.
03 Spirographs (even though I'm not very good at them).
04 Plaits.
05 Listening to records while we cook/while I watch C cook.
06 Planning for having visitors (Late Nov - Grandma & little sister & mid Dec - Ma & step-Dad!)
07 Watching old films in the cinema (this week was Singing In The Rain).
08 Tea that fixes things (eg. stomach aches, bad moods).
09 Pressing flowers to put in a special scrapbook.
10 Late afternoon/early evening walks with C, wherein we fall in love with Launceston all over again. Including; the smell of people's delicious dinners, the skyline, the ambery light, watching people go about their afternoon rituals, a scruffy old street cat, watching a friendly game of cricket and having C explain the rules of cricket to me, finding a sweet new grocers (I want to apply for a job there!) and feeling like a hero reaching the top of the hill home again.

+ Apologies for my iPhone quality photos. I need to show my SLR some love again.

I like giving myself a time limit sometimes when drawing. Otherwise, I get carried away and end up two hours in not really liking what I've ended up with. A ten minute deadline means rough, sketchiness, but the general idea is conveyed. I like long projects that take a few days to refine as well, but time isn't always available for such things. I bought this dress from ASOS a few weeks ago. I haven't bought new clothes in a long time so this was a treat. I find that I tend to fall into that tiny gap between 'regular' sizing and Curve/plus sizing. So I had to buy this dress a size up, there's a bit of room to move - I'll grow into it ;)

Are you familiar with Gemma Correll's little What I Wore Today drawing project? You draw a picture of yourself and submit it to the group Flickr pool.