Which Class is Right for Me?

All my classes last for five days and are for six students maximum. Classes are designed to help you develop your own style of linocut and to improve your practical skills. There is plenty of one to one teaching along with practical demonstrations and group discussion.

All classes are suitable for those with a little experience, but absolute novices may find the Focus on Skills class the best place to start.

All classes include a comprehensive sharpening lesson that covers materials and methods for sharpening, honing and maintaining your cutting tools.

Focus on Skills

This course is for anyone new to linocut or for those wanting a good skills base in designing, cutting and printing. It is a helpful all-rounder course and a good refresher course if you are returning to linocut.

You’ll be designing and printing two linocuts in this five day class: a single colour print and a simple colour reduction print four or five layers. The course will cover all aspects of linocut from design idea to finished print. The emphasis is on developing a good set of skills for designing, cutting and printing.

This is the only course where you will use pre-mixed colours (which you are welcome to tweak to suit your taste). Using a range of pre-mixed colours takes the focus away from colour mixing from scratch, leaving you time to concentrate on the business of cutting and printing. Importantly, it gives you the opportunity to create a range of finished prints in differing colourways. This is a very helpful way of learning what works well for linocut and pushes you into using colour effectively for print.

Focus on Reduction

This course is for those who want to explore the possibilities of reduction linocut in depth. It is suited to all levels of skill from those new to reduction printing to the more experienced looking to experiment. If you are entirely new to linocut, perhaps try a little one colour print or two before the course just to have an idea of the basics.

During this five day course you work on a single reduction print. We will cover design, with tips for drawing and composition, plus how to translate a photograph, or combination of photographs effectively into linocut. The emphasis will be on creating a print to challenge your mark making, cutting and inking skills while exploring the unique flexibility of the reduction process.

You will be working with safe wash oil based inks on a variety of papers, developing your own colour palette for your print. There will be with some helpful tips to manage your inks effectively and economically in class and at home. You will also be working with extender for transparency and will look at techniques like colour bleeds, ghost printing and wiping.

Focus on Technique

This is a course designed to develop your skill set with a series of exercises and experiments. The emphasis is on the exploring and refining your cutting and printing skills. This course is best suited to those with some experience of linocut who are looking for a technical course aimed at providing a good range of ideas and skills for future printmaking.

You will work on two blocks. These could be samplers or figurative designs, but the emphasis is on experiment and method, not the image. Expect to leave the class with many assorted experimental prints and not a neat edition of matching prints. I will be looking to address any personal challenges in your printmaking and encouraging the group to share feedback and progress.

With your first block, you will be working on ways of cutting that can be challenging. These include balancing cut work, isolated fine lines, fluid line work cut into the block, detail work, cutting to simulate brush and dip pen work, cutting for different textures, and managing clean space in your print.

Your second block is for colour reduction to work on inking skills. These will include colour mixing both on the plate and by layering colour. You will experiment with transparency and opacity, extender and when to use it, multicoloured inking with a single roller and looser inking with multiple rollers, wiping and ghost printing

Each day there will be short talks on paper, inks, how to create multi-block prints and combine the technique with woodblock, I will also touch on monoprinting with lino inks.