Thursday, February 10, 2011

Linocuts!

My first attempt at making linocuts went even better than I expected it would. I bought the cutting tool yesterday and I tried cutting a piece of balsa wood but it was a pain in the ass to cut. So I went back to the art and crafts store today and I bought the rubber mat style thingy for cutting and making linocuts with, it's a little bit bigger than a post card.

I put my image, the head of a hound dog that I sketched recently, on the rubber thingy and then I made my cuts. This time around I used acrylic paint that had been cut with varying degrees of water to change it's thickness, one is supposed to use inks for these type of art pieces but holy hell the inks they sell at the arts and crafts store are super expensive and knowing me, I'll end up splashing them all over the house, which would not be good at all. So I used what I had.

Here's the first one I did:
I liked how the thinned out paint took to the surface. I was happy with the first result but I wanted deeper color. And after making a few more I finally got it the way I wanted it:

I alternated between using a sponge brush and a paint brush with bristles when I applied the paint to the surface of the linocut. I liked how they both looked different when I applied the paper to the painted linocut.

I did nine pieces that had one head on it and I used various paint colors on them. Happy with most of them I made some new cuts to the lino surface and I did some with two heads:
I loved how deep the color came out when I applied the paper to the painted linocut surface. It was thrill to see the image burst out onto the paper, it reminded me of watching a Polaroid picture develop. I played around with different colors:

After I had made four with two heads I decided to make some with three heads. I also began to play around with mixing colors:
All in all my first attempts are successful, meaning I'm happy with the way they look and the process by which I made them. Tomorrow I'm going to cut a retro rocket ship and do some more deep color pieces on the same sketch paper that I used for the first batch, it's got a parchment kind of feel but it was relatively inexpensive.

In case any body was wondering, yes, some of these are for sale.

5 comments:

Wings1295 said...

Interesting stuff, Doc. You always have something going on!

lisahgolden said...

Those are great, Sir. You are multi-talented.

Kal said...

I was going to say that too. You always have some unique creative project on the go.

intelliwench said...

Artist, chef, wordsmith...what can't you do???

Mnmom said...

I'll bet you get lost in these for hours that feel like minutes.