In my middle school classroom I inherited lino. printmaking supplies. I resisted learning this art in school because, of course, I was going to be a painter, right? Sigh... I just can't stand to see all of those beautiful tools and materials sit and languish. Besides, the kids will probably love it. There might be a future printmaker in the bunch. Guess who's learning to cut linoleum? The lesson here is never to pass up learning something cool, folks. You just never know.
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| The building that inspired the painting "Old Patches." This old place got under my skin. |
The first step is finding the right image. Did I choose a simple turtle or celtic design? Of course not. I spent an afternoon going through my photos, increasing their value contrasts and converting them to black and white. There were simple ones, of course, but I chose this one. In my defense, it looked pretty straightforward on the computer screen. It was only after I started drawing the tree branches and deciding where they should be dark and light that I began to see just what a fun idea this was. Yep, that's me. Jump right into the deep end.
Then remember I haven't had lessons.
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| Drawn onto the linoleum, ready to begin cutting. Of course I've already made the first mistake; I didn't make it a reversal of the photo, it'll print backwards. Good thing I didn't add words!! |
This process seems to require thinking from light to dark, then removing the light areas first. The watercolor painting process is similar, so I am hopeful that it will aid me here. To tell the truth, I'm pretty excited to try this whole process. If I can pull one or two of these off I might even try the reduction process where I can use more than one color. If not, I promise I'll try a cute turtle, and I hate 'cute.' So here we go, off on a new tangent. Still not using the gouache, but planning to go back to it any day now! Yeah.
Thanks for stopping by! Alice
