Lino printing

Lino printing

In class we are doing lino printing and been asked to look at two different styles Picasso's and Tom Davidson's.

Picasso's lino cuts

Picasso’s first linocut printing was in 1952 he had produced a series of simple posters for the potters of Vallauris, a village in the hills above Cannes. Picasso found the process of lino cutting too labour-intensive and complicated, as it required the cutting and registering of six different colour blocks to be printed precisely one on top of the other. So after a few years Picasso returned to linocut printing with an extraordinary solution to the multiple colouring blocks problem which was rather than using separate blocks for each colour, he printed the whole image from just one block in the so-called ‘reduction’ method.

The reduction method 

Is the method we are doing in class and in the reduction method, one block was printed in the lightest colour, then cut again and printed from the lighter to the darker colours. 

This way of doing lino cut was simpler in the lining up for the printing, the problem was that you needed an idea of colour, shading and shapes as well as the understanding of correct layering as once you made the cut it was irreversible and any mistakes and all the previous work was ruined another problem was if you cut it out of order the print wouldn't work either.

Tom Davidson's lino cuts

Tom Davidson's lino-cuts are produced using a reduction process which is printing each colour on top of the previous colour, working from light to dark.

We as a class were first asked to look at Tom's lino cuts for an understanding as Tom's lino cut are incredible as the details in his work are so fine and complicated to think about when you know what the process is involved in how there made as he uses more the eighteen different colours for more detail.