Process: Hist Linocut (and clear carve lino review) (Patreon)

This print started out with the desire to save time and cut out a step from my printing process by using transparent lino blocks. I hate tracing the art onto the block, so I figured if I could plop my block on top and just carve from my original art everything would be 80% simpler. 

I was wrong. There's a reason this stuff as two stars on Blick. 

For my design I chose a cool screenshot I had taken of a Hist tree, then processed it in Photoshop and drew over parts that did not process well. I then printed, cut, and attached it to the bottom of the clear carve lino block, and started carving away.

This is where the trouble started.

Because there's a few millimeters between sketch and top surface, the angle you're looking at the block from made a big difference as to where the lines appeared to be - which meant that I couldn't rotate the block as I worked like I normally do. It was also pretty hard to cut in general, with the end of the line needing to be angled back up if you wanted to have it separate at all.  The clear material made it very hard to see which parts I had and hadn't carved away, especially when it came to small details. I ended up having to paint an acrylic glaze over the pyramid portion to I could see anything at all. 

The experience did not improve when it came time to print. For one, the material curves slightly (likely due to age), which means that unless you're applying pressure constantly to keep it down, it'll lift up. And if that happens before you're done with it, tough luck. 

The material itself is also very sticky, which lead to the little carved-out bits sticking to the uncarved parts and causing those big white "bubbles" on the test print above. It's practically impossible to see where they are until the block is printed. The surface itself doesn't seem to be ideal either, leaving a lot of texture even on the smooth sketch paper above.

I got fed up and used regular pink easy cut rubber for the flowers. I've also switched to Charbonnel Aqua Wash inks for the reds as of the Vvardenfell print - they're a lot less transparent and more pigmented than Speedball waterbased. Downside - they're also stinky. Since it's summer, I printed these outdoors. 

I started with the flowers and then registered the transparent block on top. 

My first print. You can see that the flowers, carved from soft rubber, printed beautifully with just a hint of texture. The clear cut block, on the other hand, was apparently too hard to effectively print on all but the smoothest paper. I ended up using way more ink than usual and spending a lot of time rubbing the thing to get anything resembling a solid black. Of the 6 cards in my original run, three were unuseable and I ended up having to make more. 

You can see the final artwork in this post right here.