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Linocut flickbook workshop with Jotta

March 25, 2012

My linocut flickbook workshop at the Jotta Live event on Saturday was great fun. I’ve been wanting to run a flick book workshop for a while and I had eight keen students happy to take up the challenge of making a simple animation using linocut printing in just three hours!
The first part of the workshop was to draw out a quick plan of the animation frames that would make up the flick book. Each book was made up of 32 sheets of card, making an animation of around 1 or 2 seconds. To keep things simple each person carved no more than two or three separate component images which could then be printed in varying positions on the paper.

The next stage was to draw the designs onto the blocks and start carving. Most of the students went for some kind of character moving across a background but the brief was entirely open.

When printing, we used the simple registration method of drawing round the blocks onto a piece of paper to make a template. As printing progressed, the movement of the blocks could be traced.

The images ranged from the violence of a man-eating gorilla to the endearing illustration of a monkey hugging a T-Rex.

Here you can see the finished prints laid out to dry. These were then bound using book screws to make the finished flick books.


I shot video of all the flickbooks but I don’t have time to upload them tonight. I will try to do it soon! In the meantime, if you fancy having a go at carving and printing your own linocut I’ll be running drop-in workshops from between 11am and 5pm Monday to Wednesday this week at my Linocutboy Live pop-up shop on Newburgh Street in central London. It costs £5 and there is no need to book. Come and say hi if you’re in the area!