INTAGLIO PRINTMAKING PROFESSIONAL

Sheets of lino are also mass manufactured which means that artists can create linocuts that are massive (I have seen more and more people getting a steam roller to press their enormous designs that won’t fit on an etching press). Lino was used because it provided artists with a material of consistent quality where they didn’t need to fight against the grain of traditional wood materials. Laura Boswell has a great list of suppliers who stock artists woodblocks on her blog here.

INTAGLIO PRINTMAKING PROFESSIONAL

You can get your hands on bog standard plywood or you can opt for more professional Japanese Plywood which (like all things Japanese) is ridiculously high quality with effectively no grain meaning you can easily carve in any direction really easily. Plywood is essentially thin veneers (paper-thin sheets) of wood glued on top of each other, each one rotated 90 degrees in order to create a strong material. There are a few different versions you can buy that range in depth of the sheet (4mm, 6mm & 9mm) and also in terms of the quality of the plywood. Boxwood is more expensive because it’s less commonly available, but lemonwood appears to be a very well respected and slightly more affordable alternative. Whereas there are several varieties of trees that can be used for side grain, with endgrain there are only a few types used because of the required quality of the material – extremely dense, consistent hardness between the annular growth rings. Endgrain is typically from very dense hardwood like Boxwood or Lemonwood (not a lemon tree – it just smells citrusy when cutting).

So you can see all the growth rings of the tree that it was taken from. Since starting to use it I’ve also heard it referred to as soft grain wood, tulip (tulipwood), magnolia or birch.Įndgrain is essentially the alternative to side-grain where the wood is cut across the grain. The most common being Sidegrain, as it describes the way that the slice of wood is down along the side of the grain rather than as a cross-section (across the grain). Woodcut and Lino Materials – What are they (literally)…įor woodcut printmaking, the material I started with seemed to have multiple names to describe it.

Here are my thoughts on the differences (and similarities) of working on lino and wood block for printmaking. So I decided to buy some woodblocks recently to try it out. As I’ve got more interested in the art and craft of block printing (intaglio, relief printing… whatever you want to call it) I really started to wonder about the other options for materials out there.

It has so many amazing qualities that make it a great choice for anyone looking to get into block printing. This was where my love affair with lino-cutting began, and I really do love it. As a person with no idea what I was doing, I just went to my local art shop intent on having a go and found that the materials they had available were all focussed towards linocut printmaking. So what’s the difference between linocut and woodcut? I’ve been excited by relief printmaking since I first saw some great artists work using the various mediums available – Hokusai’s beautiful woodcut prints of Mount Fuji, Picasso’s linocut prints and loads and loads of other stunning and impressive artists work.

Intaglio printmaking