This class is very local to me - hurrah - I was so much less tired than usual when I got back home after class - because I'd only spent 7 minutes each way travelling!
5 in the class - all women, some with children who'd just started school, so were able to do something during the day, other than childcare. Class was in a large barn (listed building) set up with 3 sets of tables that would seat 8. Plenty of space. Ruth is a daughter of the farm, who lives nearby offsite, whereas the rest of the family live on site.
We started by cutting a trial plate, using blue linocut (the grade that is used in schools). Easy to cut, but not great for fine detail. But useful to try out different carving tools.
Then we carved 3 inch blocks with a positive image, and negative, plus a black line drawing and a white line drawing. I chose a beetle. And we printed using different types of ink. My linocutting was rather clumsy, and I need more practice to develop better skills.
The second day we found an image we liked (one of my drawings of flowers in a milk bottle), in order to do reduction printing. More difficult that it seems! It was good advice to draw out the image twice, and colour in the areas to be cut away. This limits how likely you are to cut out the wrong area. I was constantly referring to my colouring. Proofs were done, then small amendments to cut away areas creating print noise. I decided to do a shaded bottom layer, with light blue on the left, and darker on the right.
Then decisions were made about how much to cut back on the Lino, for the second layer of print. Once again, more skills in cutting are required. But when printed in dark blue, it was good enough to show I had mastered the principles.
Two fun days.
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