Part 3: Project 9 - Experimental Mark Making with Lino

Chisel, nail punches, bradel, stanley knife, screw, nail, wire brush, scissors.

For this project I started by choosing some tools from our house and garage that I thought would make good impressions into the lino. I then divided my lino into squares with a pencil and went ahead using a rubber mallet to bash the tools or objects into the lino.

Most of the objects and tools worked really well except for the chisel which wasn't sharp enough. I liked putting the nails and screws on their sides and tops to make different, effective marks. The nail punch tools were really effective and left very definite circles of different sizes. I played around with positioning the circles on the lino to give different effects.

Then I did a rubbing of the lino to make sure that the marks would stand out on the print.

Even though looking at the lino the marks don't look very defined, when I started printing they look really effective.

Here are some close ups of the marks when inked:

Nail punches

Stanley Knife

Bradawl & Nail punches

Nails

Wire brush

For printing I decided to use two different colours and begin by printing full size using blue water-based ink. I then used paper masks to mask out areas of interest to print at smaller scales. 

Masking

Masking with second colour.

I used two different papers; Zerkyll, Smooth Cartridge sized 11 x 14" and A4.

Developing ideas further:

The marks made with the tools I choose came our really effectively. I was able t create patterns with them that could look really effective on a design. I thought about what would work with my design from the reduction print. Whilst the concept for the design I was really pleased with, it definitely needed further work. The marks that these tools make would really enhance my design, giving it more texture and interest.

I decided to put my design back into Procreate and add the textures to my design to see what it would look like.

Final thoughts:

This was a really interesting project, I was surprised that these general tools could make such good marks into the lino. I really like the idea that you can use other objects to cut the lino with not just the carving tools normally sold for lino cutting.

Masking the sections of the lino squares really helped to emphasise the areas that were the most successful and create quite interesting prints in themselves.

Overall I am really pleased with my experiments and the prints I was able to make from them.