Monkeys - linocut in progress

Here are a few shots of my latest linocut edition in progress. I'm creating this as a reduction print, which means I use just one piece of lino and cut it down after each colour before printing the next.

Snap of the print after the 1st two colours have been printed, a pale yellow and quite a bold blue:



After all the prints have had the blue printed I cut away the Lino ready to print the next colour, green. The thing to remember is that you need to cut away everything that you want to remain the previous colour, i.e blue in this case.
Here is the print with the green plate added:


After cutting away again the next colour was brown, here is a shot of the roller & glass slab where I'm preparing the ink:



And here is the Lino block ready to print the brown, you can see the card template I'm using for registration in this shot. It's got strips of card to line up the Lino with, and pen lines to mark where I should place the paper. This is how I manage to print each colour in the right place on top of the previous colour. Registration is a tricky business & there is always some slight difference in each colour - which adds to the handmade quality of the prints, and makes each one unique!


Here is the print with the brown added, looking almost finished!


Just one more colour to go, here is the Lino being cut down for the last colour:


It's always a bit scary cutting away each time, there's no going back!

At the moment I'm still waiting for the brown to dry before I can print the last layer.... watch this space.

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