The making of my turtle lino print.

In this post I am sharing with you how I created this turtle lino print.

For creating the design, I used this watercolour painting I made with watercolour pencils.

I then traced it to the traditional grey lino block. Carving it wasn’t easy as the block has been lying around for years and was really stiff. I printed test printed the first version to see what more needed to be carved and continued carving.

I made the mistake to attach the block with rather thick double-sided tape and it felt uneven when I rolled out the paint on the block. After several attempts to get a decent print, I gave up. I   used those prints to test various colours and mediums – Derwent’s Graphitint, acrylic ink, gouache and watercolour. I liked the watercolour version best.

Next, I refined the lines of the turtle by going over them with my carving tools and this helped preventing the clogging of the paint in the lines.  I also got rid of the double-sided tape that made the turtle so uneven and attached it with simple double-sided carpet tape to my registration board.

For the print I used Hosho paper and Caligo Safewash ink.

After making all my prints I chose the best ones and painted them all with turquoise watercolour. As there were no visible outer lines, I had to guess where the outer lines would be. I think the colour adds more interest to the paint.

When I printed the edition, I was struggling with space to let the prints dry – I left one of my prints on a box in front of my window sill. Big mistake, when you have nosy cat. I ended up with this paw mark and a few more on my window sill – which I still have to clean! This will probably end up as a special print for sale. Cat lovers might appreciate it.

I hope you like my turtle print. You can find it here.

You can also find my video where I show my tools and how I print here.

Thanks for reading.

Helen x