I’ve had pieces of Lino (SoftCut) and all the paraphernalia that goes with it for more than a year now (probably two if I’m honest), so far I have cut and printed some leaves, and designed a Christmas card which I sent out to friends and family in December 2022. The leaves were incredibly simple, but you have to start somewhere, and the Christmas card was inspired by designs I’d seen on the internet so I don’t feel like I 100% own my design.
My next attempt was inspired by a Molotow drawing I had done of some stylised peonies in a blue vase.
The first thing I did was to change the drawing in Photoshop to a basic black and white template.
The next thing was to transfer it to my Lino block. I ended up simplifying the drawing, as I don’t feel confident yet to do something complicated. I wanted to print in three colours, similar to the original drawing, but I hadn’t thought it through properly – I do not have tiny brayers (paint rollers) to do the individual parts, so that’s something to think about in future, for example, separating the pieces of Lino, painting individual colour layers. It’s all a learning curve. I ended up using a paintbrush to add paint to the flowers and leaves, and used a brayer for the vase, the paint wasn’t as evenly applied but I quite like the imperfect effect. Here is the result.
