Friday, August 02, 2013

Friday afternoon art - linocuts!

Maybe it's just my school conditioning - memories of primary school - but there is something about Friday afternoon that eschews bookwork and yearns for a bit of relaxed creativity. So, if I'm going to suck it up and do art, it will likely be on a Friday afternoon.

As part of our "unit" of work on plants, over a series of Friday afternoons, we've been working on plant-inspired art. We've done some line drawings with pencils, looked at botanical art and then worked on linocuts. I remember linocuts from high school - the art room smelt like lino all the time.

I stumped up and purchased a linocut kit from here. It had everything - the lino, the cutting tools, the paint the brayer (see how technical I am?).


The kids spent some time working on their designs - my only stipulation was that it had to be inspired by plants...there may or may not have been tears shed over this stage and a few bits of screwed up paper around the place!



There are some great instructions for the practicalities of linocuts found here. The next step was to draw the design onto lino and cut it out. Only one finger was sacrificed in the name of art...





This took many weeks...

Finally we were all carved out and ready to print! I sacrificed a glass panel from a picture frame as a paint "tray", we got our paint all velvety, coated our lino and printed:






 


 I LOVE them!!! They look so spectacular! We have some leftover lino - and so we are (all!) going to do a design (with no restrictions) and see what we come up with, now we are familiar with the process. Stay tuned for more art greatness!

Have you ever done linocuts?
How great is the smell?
What's your latest art project (yanno, for inspiration!)



8 comments:

  1. Remember doing linocuts in highschool.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly! I can now relax somewhat knowing they haven't missed out!

      Delete
    2. Yep, I remember our High School art days with lino cuts and the only lino print in my possession (which I think is a spider) - and the teacher who taught both of us :D

      Delete
  2. They are beautiful!! We did some lino art a few years ago, and I would LOVE to go back and do more. These look really lovely. And I hope the 'sacrificed' finger is now okay! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Quick application of band-aid and all OK. No stitches, no hospital :-) But have band-aids on hand would be my tip!

      Delete
  3. These are awesome!!!

    And yes I remember doing them at school too but for the life of me can't remember the actual design.

    BTW I took a look at the link (thanks so much for including that) and did you purchase an extra tool or anything else or simply the kit? I think I'll need extra lino, I want to give it a try again too!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It has two sheets of lino. I actually went to our local art store to get equipment (I like to shop local if I can). They only had lino and nothing else. So I got the kit. The only thing is only one kid at a time can use the carver thingy and the brayer thingy.

      Delete
  4. The designs are wonderful! We've used a brayer with polystyrene plates before, and used a tray to roll the ink (glass from an old frame is a good idea). I'd love to try this in a year or two with my two.

    ReplyDelete

Bloggers LOVE comments! We are pretty needy that way, so go on, leave some love :-)

Embroidery Project - Blue Butterfly

I downloaded this pattern as a PDF from Hoop Embroidery Co on Esty as my first attempt at the technique known as "thread painting"...