Finally Back: Carving Hog Hammock

Well, its been about a week, please excuse my absence. I've been driving through Appalachia to visit family and working my day job. But now I'm back, with more on my on-going project. I finally found linoleum in the dimensions I want, and began the carving process!


Perhaps you'll remember my earlier post on planning and sketching for this piece. With this done, carving the actual printing plate is made much simpler. 


To carve a printmaker needs a cutter (one with exchangeable tips or several different cutters) and artist's linoleum blocks. Having tracing paper also makes everything a lot easier. I first traced my sketch onto the tracing paper with a soft graphite pencil. 

Then, I flipped the tracing paper over on top of the linoleum, and rubbed over all my lines with a smooth, rounded object -- in this case the flat of my fingernail, but you could use the back of a spoon or the butt of your cutter, etc. 

The wonderfully convenient thing about this method is I now had a reverse-image of my sketch on the linoleum. This way the finished print will look as I planned, instead of being flipped. And I avoided having to try to redraw the inverse image on the plate by hand. Since my linocut features a lot of small, relatively detailed figures, I did go back over some of the lines left after rubbing so I had very tight lines to follow in carving. 


Now I was ready to take my knife to it! 


This linoleum was particularly gritty, and dulled my tips a bit. Dull tips lead to slipping and cut hands -- I'll probably put something up about how to sharpen your tips soon. 

My plate isn't quite finished yet -- I have some details on the building and the people to finish -- but it's getting there! Check back over the next couple days to watch the progress.