Hand printed linocut cards

September 15, 2011

Today I was supposed to be doing other things but my brain wouldn’t let me do the things I was supposed to be doing so I decided to muck about instead.  I found some little linocuts I made a while back and decided to try out my new water-based inks from Atlantis, a big art shop in London. Here are the inks, they’ve got german all over them so I figured they must be alright. They’re made by a company called Schminke. Even better.

Waterbased lino inks

As I no longer have access to proper printmaking facilities and I have not yet purchased a press of my own I had to resort to my trusty double-ended wooden spoon.  I found it in a junk shop in Ludlow and it’s just super.  It has two ends.  When did you last see a spoon with two ends?  Look, see how shiny it is!

My shiny spoon

So the inks work quite well, I can report.  They’re definitely water-based in that they’re closer in consistency to paint than ink, but they roll out pretty nicely and print OK.  They don’t dry too fast either, which is good if you’re printing a large print run as the ink won’t dry on the roller.  Here’s one of the prints I made with my wee roller.

And finally, a general pic of my work area. I’m using my folk’s old glass shower screen as an inking surface.  It fits onto my planchest perfectly.  I’m almost as proud of it as I am of my double-ended spoon.