Last year in early March me and my friend Sameer decided to try out Linocut. I thought documenting the process will be good.
I am fairly late in documenting this. We collaborated in producing some canvas murals for a client , the canvases were done in acrylic paints. We mostly work in digital medium so after having a taste of traditional medium we thought trying out some printing technique would be great fun. It turned out a really awesome experience.
We first thought of trying out woodblock prints, but we later settled on linoleum blocks. We got some linoleum blocks and the cutters and inks. Finding the right ink was an adventure in itself. We got acquainted the ink supplier, he was a good person. He shared his concerns about how digital medium has reduced the people doing traditional printing. He was glad that we are trying it.
The process itself was very fun, chipping out the negative space in the linoleum was very different from the monotonous work we do otherwise. The main challenge was that there was no “undo” or Ctrl + Z not even a eraser would help, so planning was crucial, once you carve a design in the linoleum sheet you can’t revert it 🙂
I hope to do more prints this year, It will also be challenging to try some of the harder and intricate designs. As we were trying this out for the first time there were some mistakes and happy accidents. It was a good learning exercise, some times doing something out of your comfort zone is fun in its own way.
