Linocut Printing

Materials and Process

  • Linoleum block

  • Carving tools (u- and v-shaped blades)

  • Printing Ink

  • 1-2 Brayers

  • Paint plate or palette

  • Spoon or palette knife

  • Paper

  • materials for drawing and planning design, transfer paper if desired

  1. Draw, plan, choose design

  2. Draw or transfer design onto linoleum block. Keep in mind the carved design will reverse in the final print

  3. Carve the design into the linoleum. Keep in mind more carving means more white space, and areas with little to no carving will have blocks of color

  4. Scoop ink onto plate and roll brayer to coat with ink

5. Roll ink onto the linoleum carving. No need to press hard, just fully cover the surface with ink.

6. Place the paper on top of the ink covered linoleum. Use your hand or a second, clean brayer to lightly press the paper into the block

7. Pull the print up!

Above: Linoleum block with the design carved into it, and the carving tool with two v-blades and a u-blade that can be switched out.

To the right: Linoleum block after printing ink has been applied with the brayer.

My Experience

I really enjoyed this printing method. It requires a lot of drawing design and playing with different lines and patterns. It can also be a surprise when you finally get to the point of pulling the final print.

The carving of the design is a meditative process once the design is laid down and planned out. It took a bit of getting used to the feel of how to use the tools, something that just gets more natural with practice.

My tips:

Turn the block while carving, rather than the knife/your hand, especially for curves, circles and dots.

Think about how much or little ink you want. Use this to create value and depth in your design.

  • In areas with more ink shown- carve less.

  • In areas with white coming through- carve more.

Practice using the carving tools. Make marks on a scrap piece of linoleum to understand what each do differently.

Classroom Application

Linocut printing would be a great introduction to printing for high school and middle school students. This technique is good for teaching studio habits of mind in addition to specific elements of art. A few lesson focus ideas are listed and described below.

Elements of Art:

  • Line lesson: instructing students to create a simple design with different variations of line (curved, straight, thick, thin, diagonal/vertical/horizontal). Thinking about line is a good jumping off point for a carving lesson to give students the opportunity to practice both design planning and just using the different carving tools.

  • Value lesson: instructing students to create a design that represents a 3-dimensional object or depth/space using value. Value can be created by adding more or less carved lines and shapes. This lesson would give students practice thinking in terms of printing/inverse designs and creating different illusions of space with line.

Print from original linocut carving, on watercolor paper.

Print from linocut carving after adding background peaks, on drawing paper.