Printmaking review

I began working with lino printing in my previous project, and it is one of many creative mediums that I want to progress with further. I carved various sleeping positions into pieces of lino and cut out the negative spaces. I decided that I would do this at home instead of at college. This is because the ink colours I wanted for my prints had to be mixed in advance - I thought it would be easier if I made them at home myself. The inks at college were also not water based which meant I could not put any excess ink down the sink and it is more tedious to clean up. Therefore, I found printing at home to be more suitable as I was able take my time when printing and clean up quickly. I also liked having my own inks because these would last me for a long time and I can use them whilst I am at university. Overall, I enjoyed working with lino, even though I found the outcomes to be unpredictable because we did not have a professional press. This is a downside to working at home because if I had a press then I would get the most out of every lino print. Despite this, when printing I used a heavy book and this managed to do the job. When buying my water soluble inks, the shop assistant advised me to mix drawing inks with the printing ink to create different types of colours. I tried to do this but the results were not quite what I expected. For example, when I mixed yellow drawing ink with white it created a bright yellow-green tone. This made it difficult to create colours with the limited ones I already had. Despite this, I am pleased with the pigments I chose for my outcomes and believe the prints were successful. I was also planning to make some pieces using the dry point method with the etching I created. However, I was not aware of the materials included in this practise, such as intaglio paper to print on and cleaning cloths. I could not afford to purchase these materials and the college did not have these when I asked. However, I was more interested in lino printing and was more keen to practise this. In conclusion, I really enjoyed lino printing and it is a potential material that I may use later in my project, I am happy that I tried it out as well as experimenting with drawing inks as well.