With lockdown I found myself with plenty of spare time, so this month I have continued the theme of exploring new design medias! I have experimented and researched lino printing, something I am definitely already familiar with, however I’ve never really looked at how different creatives use the medium. I love Lino cutting I find it sooo relaxing and satisfying, so I was excited by the brief I had set myself this month.
I have also discovered another great website this month! https://createxplore.com/find-projects Createxplore is a website for non-professional creatives to find projects to work on! A lot of starting out businesses/ charities don’t have the funds to hire professional or qualified people and therefore look to creatives to help them create media. Some of these projects offer payment and some don’t, but either way its great experience if your looking for it. You don’t always have to travel and it's free to join so why not?
So to gather some inspiration for my Lino print I went straight to Behance. I found the profile @linobob - an illustrator form Montreal, Quebec in Canada. They're work is very illustrative and uses the aspect of line work you get when making Lino to his advantage. @Linobobs work is mainly character creating and I like how the imperfections of the printing process creates texture. Due to the difficulty of creating detail in Lino cutting, exaggerated features are easier to create and help the character making process.
My next source of inspiration also came from Behance @RyanMcAuther. A freelance creative from Cape Town South Africa. This astronaut Lino print is a more graphical example of Lino print. I LOVE the use of text in this piece and how it seamlessly is a part of the design. They have used the advantages of the high contrast piece to create the idea of light and dark - very successful. I love this print, I would buy it- it makes a great poster and the reusable Lino print makes for good poster making. Side note - please check out @RyanMcAuther on Behance if your looking for portfolio inspiration. The layout is amazing.
I then found Kathleen Neeley on Flicker. These prints are a lot more detailed - more like a piece of art, the use of line work has created depth and texture. The repeated lines make me think of psychedelic type art- the common theme of night time /under the sea - I feel a sense of mythical dream like design- which the use of lines exaggerates.
So created an A4 design. A very illustrative design! I wanted to make use of line work and contrast so the design is simple, but I used different lines and marks to distinguish the differences in characters. I feel my heaviest influence is @linobob. I like the fact that I could repeat the lino to create a pattern. I feel this design would look nice printed on a tote bag or something. I also wanted to show my first attempt at printing the design- printing can be unpredictable and takes a bit of trial and error to get right. The amount of ink obviously makes a huge difference to the print but I still liked the fact that there was a few imperfections as thats the point really of making the print - just allow the texture.
