Last weekend, my friend and I took a linocut printing class at 3 Fish Studios. First discovered at the Renegade Craft Faire, and finally with a weekend free, we took to opportunity to engage our artistic cores and participate in one of their weekend classes.
I gotta say, they’ve got a good operation going on over there, about a week prior to the class, we received emails (I say this in plural because Sheila and I received them individually) outlining everything we needed to have prepared for the day and a request for the image we would be using as inspiration for our linocut. Putting mass amounts of thought into what I wanted my image to be, I remember reading one of the most influential blogs currently on the internet and remembered a post about the current hotness in animal trends. Always wanting to do something pretty, I combined my image of the rhino with a lovely girl in a fancy dress.
Showing up to class with a cup of coffee and a vision, Erik, gave us a brief history of the linocut and an explanation of the materials we’d be using. From there, we traced our images, then transferred them to the linoleum, and began to carve away.
After a few hours that FLEW by, I had an image that I thought would realize my vision appropriately…turns out, it didn’t. I had tried to create a background that would contrast the white dress and make it pop. After inking up my piece of linoleum, rolling it through the press, which was really exciting, I was unhappy with the result. The main image was awesome, couldn’t have turned out better, but I was not stroked on the background. I spent the rest of the day trying to fix it and made it progressively worse.
Instructor Erik also introduced us to a technique called chine colle where you paste down colored papers, then make your print on top of them. Even though, I was still not 100% happy with my print…I wanted to move on and try some of the other techniques.
All in all it was a great/fun experience….but I am dead set on redoing my print….the next edition in the series may or may not involve a giraffe or ostrich and a penguin….wait for it.
Hello Keltie 