Donate Life Design

Artist Statement

For this piece, we created a poster for organ and tissue donation and I decided to try something new. I chose to use a linoleum block to carve my design into and then vibrant red ink to print it. To fulfill the competition requirements I added some text above and below the print. When I was first sketching my ideas, I knew I wanted to keep the theme light and friendly, as it's for the cause of donating organs. I sort of randomly came up with the idea of the hand reaching out of the picture frame, and not till after completing the work did I realize that it could be symbolic by showing the donor giving the heart is remembered as a person in a frame. The color and patterns I chose were somewhat random, yet I knew I wanted to use red ink as it is nice and vibrant and warm. I definitely learned a lot about the process of linoleum printing and can hopefully make more prints in the future.

The very first step in creating this piece was sketching out ideas I had, all the while keeping in mind the guidelines I had to follow for the contest. I came up with two in total, and initially chose the one I thought better represented the message I was giving. After I had a super rough draft of my sketch, I took a picture of it and mirrored it so I could begin sketching on the linoleum block. With my photographed sketch as a reference I began to draw onto my block until I was satisfied with the way everything locked. Once I had traced over all the lines more clearly in a pen, I began to carve. As I was completely new to block printing and carving, my first few carves were shallow and small, which would later prove to be a hindrance when printing. Once I got the hang of the carver I was able to quite successfully carve the rest of the design and initially also freehand the background patterns. The actual printing process was also new to me, so my first few prints were mostly just tests. Once I got a clear print on my final draft paper I let it sit and dry. My final step was adding the text, which I did with a super runny marker which allowed me to get a really saturated red color like the ink of the print.

For this piece I really wanted to play with line, shape, and texture. I continuously sketched out different designs and ideas to make my composition both interesting, yet also balanced. SInce I was new to block printing, I definitely learned some things along the way. One thing I'd have changed during the process, now that I know a bit more, is to make those things I want most pronounced and emphasized stand out by either blocking out sections around the object, in this case the hands, or carving deeper lines around the object so that there is more of white border to add contrast. Overall I am super happy with the way this print turned out and I will certainly make some more.