Linocut: A Creative Guide to Making Beautiful Prints

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The list of famous artists who contributed to the art form in its first 50-60 years is long, but they include Edward Bawden, Pablo Picasso, Sybil Andrews, Claude Flight, Frances Gearhart, Leopoldo Mendez, William Rice, and Lill Tschudi, just to name a few. In this beautiful and lively book, you feel welcomed into the world of relief printing. The instructions are well set out with easily understood practical guidance, and such a friendly vibe, you can’t fail to want to grab your tools and get started. Books and printmaking go hand in hand, so I hope this has inspired you to head out and find a good bookshop and a good book too! Vienna was amongst the first places where linoleum was used for art. This essay in Schirn Mag gives a nice summary of the relief printmaking movement there around 1900. Though it focuses on the woodcut, it includes Hugo Henneberg’s linocut called, Night Scene - Blue Pond from 1904.

Gentle curves can be made by moving your wrist or arm left and right as you cut forwards. More pronounced curves may require you to move your whole body. Try to keep your hand level as you move, so the cutting tip of the tool remains upright. Even though artists had been using linoleum for decades, linoleum was still considered by some to be a material for students and amateurs but there were enduring contributions to the art form that fought that perception. The Relief Print: Woodcut, Wood Engraving & Linoleum Cut by Watson and Kent (1945) - mentions that linoleum was used for printing wallpaper in Germany, “as early as 1890.” To make a star, carve inwards from the tip of each point of the star towards the centre using the large V-shaped tool. Hold the tool at a steep angle so the point goes down towards the centre of the star. By varying the depth of the tool you can make the line wider or narrower. This is especially effective with the V-shaped tool. Raise and lower your wrist as you carve. Try a curved line by moving your wrist from side to side as well as up and down.

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The exact angle you need to hold the tool will vary slightly depending on which tool you are using. With 18 easy-to-follow projects that can be adapted to suit your own ideas, experienced printmaker Sam Marshall guides you through the whole process – from the drawing to the carving to the inking to the printing – of creating your own beautiful prints and handmade cards whether you are working from your kitchen table or a more advanced studio set-up. Rubber Stamping: Get creative with stamps, rollers and other printmaking techniques, Stephen Fowler, 2016 Hold the tool so the handle is in the centre of your palm. Your fingers should be fairly relaxed, with your first finger pointing straight down the shaft. Make sure the tool is the right way up, with the cutting edge pointing straight down. Lino-Cuts: a Hand-Book of Linoleum-Cut Colour Printing by Claude Flight (1927) - says that Cizek was the first European (“of any standing”) to use lino for printing using European methods.

From my research so far, the transition of linoleum from flooring and wallpaper to printmaking material does not seem to be thoroughly documented. There also seems to be discrepancies within the available literature on the matter. Germany, Austria (through Franz Cizek) and the United States seem to have been amongst the first to turn to linoleum for creating art around the turn of the 20th century. The Word for Linocut in Different Countries, Languages and Eras The first linocuts that I’ve been able to find through trustworthy sources (like major museum collections around the world) have been from the United States. I’d like to note that this doesn’t necessarily mean that the United States was the first adopt linoleum. I’ve found two linocuts from 1895 from US artists (Will H. Bradley and San Francisco’s Bruce Porter). These books are brilliantly creative and have a wonderful variety of relief and linocut print techniques to try across a range of media, from fabric printing to creating your own stamps. This is a great next step and they will help you to play, explore and experiment with your printing - super fun! U.K.-based artist Sam Marshall’s Linocut (...) makes doing it yourself feel approachable, with friendly, precise instructions and projects that build in degrees of complexityThe Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art edited by Gerald W. R. Ward (2008) - mentions that linoleum was used for printing on wallpaper in Germany in 1890. Then by artists in the early 1900’s. Notes the importance of Cizek. You will find that you have to push harder with the larger tools, as you are removing more lino. Try to push the tool with your whole arm, using your body weight to generate the force. When you use the smaller tools or make shallower cuts, you need less force – a small movement of the wrist may be enough. Your cutting technique will develop over time, but do try to keep everything relaxed as much as possible … and remember to breathe! Varied widths of line made by different tools. Notice how the two ends of each line you carve are shaped by the tool. Top to bottom: 1 mm U, 3 mm U, 5 mm U, 1 mm V, large V (shallow cut), large V (deep cut).