A couple of months back, I got back into linoleum block printing again after an absence of more than a decade to participate in Hand Prints. I started with five different designs: Eurydice, Daedalus, Tentacle Raccoon, Bait, and Angel Rex. They were easy enough to create digitally (my current primary method of making art), but things changed once I faced the task of carving them, inking them, and getting them onto paper. It was quite the logistic challenge to figure out where in heck to do the printing and what I needed to do to make each piece come out all right. I took some photos of my workspace during the process.

A random glass casserole dish I can’t remember ever using makes a lovely surface for spreading ink. I have no idea where I got the cardboard either, but I think it used to be an appliance box. I found that putting paper onto the plate and then holding it in place with my hand while burnishing it really hard with the slightly convex top of my pepper grinder worked best.

I used a bathroom towel and another random casserole dish for wetting and then blotting the paper for the 8×10 “Eurydice” prints. They needed damp paper for the solid black sky to really come off the plate well. The 5×7 “Angel Rex” and “Bait” prints were much crisper and better using dry paper, as I discovered.
I’ll post images of the actual carving process next time around!