Printing

Hey peeps! I’m a bit late for this week’s blog post because my mum has been working on a landscape painting to put into an exhibition which I will be reviewing for you next week. But for now we’re going to talk about print-making!   

For those who don’t know what print-making is, it’s ‘the process of impressing an image onto a material by means of paint or ink’ (I got this quote from a book called Fun with Printing by Pernelle Sévy).

People have been making prints for thousands of years! Some of the first were made by cave people putting their hands up on the wall and blowing paint on them to leave a hand shape. The paint was made from grinding coloured rocks and mixing them with fat. But now we get paint from the store instead of making it out of fat, luckily.

Each Wednesday I go with my mum to print-making classes. At the class Mum takes a lino block and carves out of it with special tools. Then she covers the block with ink and puts it in a big printing press. The press then transfers the ink onto the paper. Only the uncut bits leave a mark on the paper. This is called linocut printing.

Mum's linocut ready for printing

Mum using the press

While mum does her lino print I do a drawing which later I put over another piece of paper and some ink. I trace over the drawing with a sharp pencil to create a monotype trace print.  Here’s what one of them came out as. It’s another portrait of Pink! See the resemblance?

Hope you like this week’s post, looking forward to next time, S.