ArtisticMoods.com

I’ve been enjoying and sharing other people’s work for so long but never seem to find the time to get my own hands busy. That’s why, this September, I started off the Crafty Moods Project. For one year, every month, I pick a random material (paper, paint, fabric and everything in between) which I use to make illustrations. After each month the results of my experiments will be shared on the blog. Scary!

Ever since I posted the beautiful block prints of Andrea Lauren, I have been very curious about lino printing. so for the third month of my project I decided to give it a try. I bought the tools (ink, linoleum plates, cutting tools and a printing roll), sketched out some ideas and started cutting..

And boy, did I underestimate this challenge. Although I did understand the basics, it takes some time to learn the different techniques. And since I gave it just one month, I spent a lot more time at cutting and printing then I had planned to (not that I mind, that’s the idea of this challenge). The thing is that there are many ways to use lino plates that will all have different results. I kind of learned this along the way. By sketching, cutting, printing dozens of prints before realizing I missed a layer and repeating the process all over again. But the good thing about spending so much time on this is that I got really into it. I enjoyed it a lot!

I realized what I like most is creating tiny stamp/prints which I used to create small illustrations, or to combine with bigger prints. I also used a lot of color; loved creating surprising shades with the basic ones I got at the store.

Here’s what I made:

Lino doodling

Warming up with some tiny stamps and color experiments is always a good start!

The flower pattern

The first larger print I cut out. I ended up putting several layers on top of each other to create some depth.

The Sweater

Creating dozens of sweaters was a bit exhausting, but decorating them with patterns and illustrations was superfun! The cherry sweater is my favorite. I’d wear that.

The Swans

Mixing up some tiny stamps (I cheated on the lake, that’s not a stamp)

The Beetle

Mr. beetle my favorite! So I took my time to create some beauty shots.

Some very large prints

You can’t see it here but they’re HUGE! I tried to get out of my comfort zone of creating teeny tiny things for a bit, concentrated on not thinking too much and went with whatever came out of my hands.