Hammock Prints

This project was for linoleum print making. I made a stamp out of linoleum, by first choosing a picture. I made the picture only have two values, black and white, by using my Art Studio app. After that, I transferred the picture onto a block of linoleum, by shading in all the black of the picture, then putting it face down on the linoleum and pushing hard with a 6B pencil scribbling on the back. This transferred the graphite from the print onto the linoleum. With carving tools, I cut out all the non-shaded linoleum.

After this step was done, I had my stamp. The process for making a print was complicated but not too hard. First, with a palette knife, I put the ink, which was very sticky, onto a glass pane. I rolled it out with a brayer and then rolled the brayer onto the stamp. I quickly set the stamp on a press and set a piece of paper on top. Using this press, I applied pressure to the handle and then removed the stamp and paper. I numbered each paper when they came out. After this I did one or two "ghosts prints" without adding more ink.

I needed to have one solid print, one multicolored print, one hand manipulated print, and one print with a untraditional background. For my solid print, I did it in all black and I thought there were some tiny spots, which I chose to fill in with blue. My multicolored print I did by painting pink ink and green ink onto my linoleum instead of using the brayer, and I pressed it. For the hand manipulated one, I used some stencils and made chose paints and sharpies to go down the tree. On the trees on the left, I wrote the word "tree" many times. For my final, untraditional background, I made abstract drawing with sharpies, including circles and triangles. A made a black print on top of this.

Oftentimes, my prints did not always come out good. I need at least four "perfect prints", meaning it looked like the stamp and was not blotchy. I actually ended up doing a total of 40 prints before I got perfect prints. After many tries I finally got these perfect prints.