Introduction to Lino Printing for Beginners

Why Lino Printing Deserves a Place on Your Kitchen Table

Lino printing is one of the friendliest routes into relief printmaking. It asks for very little space, very little money and no press at all. A sheet of lino, a couple of carving tools, a small roller and an ink pad or tube of relief ink will get you started for the price of a decent takeaway, and the whole process fits on a table you can clear away afterwards.

The appeal is the look: bold, graphic shapes, crisp edges and a slight, pleasing grain where the ink catches the surface. It suits the sort of motifs that sit happily in British homes — a sprig of lavender, a stylised hare, a row of terraced houses, a simple repeat pattern for wrapping paper. Once you have carved a block, you can print it again and again, in different colours, on cards, cotton bags, tea towels and framed paper.

What You Actually Need to Begin

You do not need a studio. You need a forgiving surface and a bit of patience.

• Lino: traditional grey hessian-backed lino is cheap and takes fine detail, but it is firm. Soft-cut vinyl is easier on the hands and better for a first attempt, though it crumbles if you carve too deeply. Start with soft-cut if you are nervous.
• Tools: a handle with interchangeable gouges. A V-shaped tool for outlines and a medium U-shaped tool for clearing backgrounds will cover most beginner work. Keep them sharp; a blunt gouge is the main cause of slips.
• Ink: water-based relief ink is easy to clean up with warm soapy water and dries quickly. Oil-based ink gives richer, slower-drying results and prints more evenly, but needs white spirit or similar to clean.
• Roller: a small hard rubber brayer, around 50–75mm wide, is ideal for blocks up to A5.
• Paper: smooth cartridge paper of 120–160gsm works beautifully. Thinner paper tears; heavily textured paper swallows the finer lines.
• Burnishing tools: a wooden spoon, a baren, or even a clean, smooth pebble. A spoon is genuinely all you need.

Add an old chopping board or a glass workbook as a printing surface, plus newspaper to protect the table.

Transferring Your Design Without Fuss

Keep your first design simple and high-contrast. Anything you carve away will print as the paper colour, so think in terms of solid shapes and clear gaps rather than fine shading. Draw it at the size you want to print, remembering that the finished image will be a mirror image of the block.

The easiest transfer method is pencil rub-through. Lay tracing paper over your drawing, trace the outline in soft pencil, then turn the tracing paper face down onto the lino and rub the back firmly with the edge of a coin or your thumbnail. The graphite lifts onto the surface. Remember to reverse it — either trace from the back of your drawing or flip the tracing paper before rubbing.

If the graphite smudges, go over the lines lightly with a permanent marker. Ink lines are far easier to see when you are carving, and they will not rub off under your hand.

Carving Safely and Confidently

Safety here is mostly about hand position and shallow cuts. Follow these rules and you will keep all your fingers.

• Never carve towards yourself. Turn the block, not the tool.
• Keep the hand holding the lino behind the blade, not in front of it.
• Take shallow passes. Skim the surface rather than digging in; two or three light cuts beat one deep gouge that slips.
• Warm the lino by resting it on a radiator or sitting on it for a few minutes. Warm lino cuts like butter.
• Cut away from the line you want to keep, clearing background in tidy rows so the block looks neat and the marks stay even.

Work over a bench hook or a non-slip mat so the block cannot slide. If you are tired or rushed, stop — most nicks happen in the last ten minutes of a session.

Inking Up and Hand-Burnishing

Squeeze a little ink onto a glass sheet or an old tile and roll it out until the roller makes a soft, tacky sound — a gentle hiss rather than a wet squelch. Thin, even ink is the secret. Too much and your print will smudge and fill in; too little and it will look patchy.

Roll across the block in several directions, lifting the roller at the end of each pass. You should see an even sheen on the raised areas and none in the carved hollows.

To register your print, draw around the block on a scrap of paper, place the block inside the outline, then lay your printing paper over it, holding the paper by opposite corners so it does not shift. Now burnish: press down with the flat of your spoon and work in small circles over the whole block, paying extra attention to edges and solid areas. Peel the paper from one corner slowly to check.

Lift the print and hang it to dry. Water-based ink dries in minutes; oil-based ink may take a day or two.

Troubleshooting and Building a Practice

• Patchy prints: too little ink, uneven pressure, or paper that is too thick. Roll out more ink and burnish harder.
• Blurry, filled-in lines: too much ink, or carved lines that are too shallow. Rinse the block and carve a little deeper.
• Ink in the hollows: your gouge marks are catching ink. Clear them again with a shallow pass.
• Curling paper: the ink is too wet. Print on drier paper or use less ink.

Label your prints in pencil along the bottom edge — the title, the edition number and your signature. A run of ten good prints from one block feels like a proper body of work, and the blocks themselves stack neatly in a drawer. Print a few extra on cards and you have Christmas or birthday gifts sorted. That is the quiet pleasure of lino: a small table, an hour's work, and something genuinely handsome to show for it.