Unicorns?! Oh and Printmaking

So I've just created a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/willbakerillustrator for the facebookies among you) and all is going great. I've had many likes which makes me jump up with excitement every time I see someone new has entered my midst and a fair few people are interested in what I'm doing. Of course I advertise new posts on Twitter and Facebook so people can read these little insights of my life and many people have come up to me in the past few days and informed me that they've read my blog and thought it was funny. Many people have said they'll comment and haven't "ahem" but don't you worry, I'm patient and the likes on my page are a brilliant substitute.

Anyway this post isn't focusing on my Facebook page, brilliant as it is no, this post is kinda focused on unicorns and printing. You may be wondering why unicorns, well I'll explain. Today someone came up to me and said they had read my blog...are you with me so far...good, so anyhow they also said that it would be more interesting if I involved unicorns so here you go L.W. here's your unicorns.

This is an amazing video I have watch countless times made by the also amazing SecretAgentBob. So now that I've got the unicorns out of the way I can start on what's really important.

I have just started my D of E (Duke of Edinburgh award) and in my skills section I chose "Relief Printing" as I enjoy it and admire the work of printers more than any of the other art forms. Doing this has given me a reason to explore different forms of relief printing, one of which is linocut. This requires you carving a corky material called linoleum with a range of different sized knives, U and V tools to create a raised surface that will pick up the ink and transfer it to paper. I will describe the process of producing the block now and the inking stage later.

For this I first mapped out my design in pencil on the lino block to give me a guideline as to where I should and shouldn't carve.

 

 

This is of one of my chicken which had been scratching around in the daffodils last weekend and I always thought of April has having daffodils so there's the link.

 

 

Next I started to carve and so I have to be serious here and inform you of the risks - knives are sharp - there's my safety reminder so I may continue. I carefully cut the design so that what is left is what will print. I do this by using the V tool to mark out the edges and clearing the smallest of spaces while I use the U tool to clear away the large spaces. I push the tools away from me and at the same angle to slice off a clean strip. If you apply different amounts of pressure to the tool it will go deeper into the lino and consequently the slice will become wider. I do this until my design is the only surface raised from the cleared areas.

 

 

 And this is what you get as well as this:

 

 

 

A load of sliced lino but you don't need to worry about that as long as you remove it before you start to print you know, just to stop it from ruining everything.

 

Okay so that's all I've got for you in this post but there should be a new one on soon so in the meantime, feel free to comment, I look forward hearing from you.

 

See ya.