After taking the piece of lino for a walk in the forest and smothering it in mud I started cutting it. I quite quickly decided that it wasn't going to do what I wanted it to with cutting alone... I want all the beautiful reticulation of the mud marks, straight up linocut won't give me that. I need some lithography.
I cleaned all the mud off the lino (which was very informative as it revealed the marks I'd cut) and mixed up some tusche. I spread water on the lino and added the tusche and started moving it around a little. I had what seemed rather a good idea... I got a hairdryer and used it to not only dry the lino but to blow the tusche around. The lino looked beautiful, however I'm not sure whether all the detail of the marks will actually show up, it might just all print black. I might need to do several of these and print them in layers to build up this effect, we will see. I got mu litho crayons and did some scribbling all over whilst looking at pictures of tree bark and the muddy tracks for inspiration.
I also got the litho drawing ink out and did some splattering. Back to Jackson Pollack and my teenage love of splattering!
I very carefully made sure it was all dry, added the chalk and then buffed in two layers of gum arabic before painting on a third. The lino is well coated and lovely and shiny which is an improvement on last time when the gum wasn't visible at all. Hopefully this gum will work better!
I'm thinking of using the gum effect and maybe making some tracks and marks using the gum arabic and bike tyres. The only annoying thing about this its that I need to leave it for a couple of weeks at least to cure otherwise I'll only be able to get now print from it and I want to be able to pull at least 8-10 so that I have lots to use for my creation!
I want to build up lots of different marks and collections of [prints so that I have lots to experiment with and choose from for the making of my piece for the end off year show.