Craftify Box

Block printing

Carving your first lino block

8 min read

Relief printing runs on a single idea, and once it is properly lodged in your head most beginner mistakes stop happening. Everything you cut away from the block stays the colour of the paper. Everything you leave standing carries ink, and that is your image.

The two rules that decide everything

You are not drawing a picture into the lino; you are removing the background from around it. That is hard to hold on to for the first hour, because the tool feels like a pencil and your hand wants to trace outlines. Trace an outline with a V-gouge and you have carved a white line through a solid shape. Choose that, rather than discover it at the proofing stage.

The second rule is that the block prints in reverse. The carved face is pressed against the paper, so the print is a mirror image. For a map or a face in profile that matters; for text it is unforgiving. Letters must be carved backwards, and the words must run backwards across the block too. Write the text out, hold it up to a mirror, and copy what you see.

Grey lino or soft-cut?

Traditional battleship lino, the grey-brown sheet on a hessian backing, is linseed oil, resin and cork dust. It is firm, holds a crisp edge and carries fine detail through a long run. The cost is that it resists the tool, and cold lino resists a great deal. Warm it and it cuts like soft butter: ten minutes on a radiator, or a couple of minutes under a hot water bottle. Warm to the touch, not hot.

Soft-cut blocks, the rubbery vinyl ones, cut with almost no pressure and need no warming, which makes them forgiving for a first block and much kinder on weak hands. The trade-offs are real: the material compresses under the blade, so fine lines round off rather than staying sharp, deep clearing is easy to overdo, and the surface wears faster. Cut two or three blocks in soft-cut to learn the tools, then move to grey lino when your designs start relying on detail.

Two gouges do most of the work

The U-gouge, a rounded scoop, is for clearing the broad background areas that need to sit well below the printing surface. The V-gouge cuts a wedge-shaped channel and is for outlines, contours and anything that should read as a line.

The thing worth understanding about a V tool is that depth controls width. The blade is a wedge, so the deeper you push, the further apart its walls are at the surface and the wider the white line prints. Lower the tool as you begin a stroke and lift as you finish, and the line tapers at both ends, which makes carved lettering look drawn rather than stamped.

Clear further back from your lines than feels necessary. If the floor of a cleared area sits too close to the printing surface, the roller touches it and leaves grey smears on clean paper.

Carving safely

Lino tools are sharp, they are pushed rather than drawn, and the failure mode is the blade leaving the block at speed in exactly the direction you were pushing. Every habit below follows from that sentence.

  • Always carve away from your body. If a cut would have to come towards you, turn the block round and cut it the other way instead.
  • Never put your non-cutting hand in front of the blade. Not beside it, not steadying the far edge, not holding a ruler as a guide. Keep it behind the tool, clear of the path the blade would take if it skidded.
  • Use a bench hook. A flat board with a batten underneath at the near edge and a stop along the far edge: the batten catches the table, the stop gives the block something to push against, and you brace the block instead of gripping it.
  • Rotate the block, not your wrist. Keep the tool travelling in a straight push and turn the block into it between strokes. Twisting mid-cut is how the blade tips over and jumps its channel.
  • Take shallow passes. Two light passes cut better than one deep one and are easier to stop. If you are leaning on the tool, it is blunt, the lino is cold, or you are taking too much at once.
  • Keep the blades sharp. A blunt tool needs force, and force is what slips.

Getting the design onto the block

A pencil rubbing is simplest: draw on thin paper with a soft pencil, lay it face down on the block and burnish the back with a spoon. The graphite transfers, and because the sheet is face down the image arrives already reversed. Carbon paper gives a cleaner line but reverses nothing, so flip the drawing first or your print comes out backwards. You can also print a mirrored image and work from it as a reference.

Then go over the design with a fine permanent marker so it survives handling, and fill in the areas you intend to keep. A block drawn as solid shapes rather than outlines reminds you which side of the line to cut.

Ink the ridges, and proof early

Halfway through, roll a thin film of ink over the block and look at it under a raking light. Two things appear that bare lino hides: stray ridges and crumbs of waste in cleared areas, which print as speckles, and the real balance of dark and light. Wipe it off and carry on.

Then take a test print sooner than feels sensible, while the block is obviously unfinished. Ink thinly, lay cheap paper over the top, burnish the back with the bowl of a spoon and peel it off. What you learn is where the design is going wrong, while you can still change your mind. You can always cut more away. You can never put it back.

For what to print with and onto, see choosing inks for paper and cloth. The block printing box is in development and starts from these same two gouges.