Hand Printing

Chapter 1

The Rough Start

First of all, this is not enough ink:

Secondly, Rives BFK heavyweight paper, as much as I loved it when I had access to a heavy duty relief press machine,  is not useful to me for hand printing.

Even adding extra ink to the block and nearly breaking my wrist to rub the ink into the paper... merely produced the faded little house below.  It's a good thing he's cute, or he'd be tossed!

Finally, I printed on cheap newsprint paper... and as you can see, the thinner paper helped me print a darker house, and with much less effort.

Well, let's see.  I did order a few beautiful, thin sheets of Japanese Kitakata paper a while back...

Chapter 2

My Friend, Kitakata

The carved block, already inked, with a small sheet of Kitakata placed over top.  Ready to be rubbed with a wooden spoon or baren.

 First attempt, with small amount of pressure applied.  Resulting house is still quite light.

 With moderate pressure and a little more ink... Now we're getting somewhere!

Note: Wondering what to do with those un-carved corners and edges of your finished linocuts?   Why not cut them off to enjoy later?  They're like bread crust!  Yum.  Obviously I like to carve my scraps into houses...

And it worked out perfectly to have those little carvings on hand for today's test printing.  But... Today's work didn't stop there.  One of the other linocuts sitting on my desk kept blinking its eyes at me and I couldn't resist giving it a go...

Chapter 3

The Rabbit

And with a little more pressure...

The End (OF THE BEGINNING!!!)