How I Make a Reduction Linocut Print - From Carving to Printing

There is a moment, partway through making a reduction linocut, when I know there is no going back. The block has been carved a second time. The second colour has been printed. The version of the block that held all the possibility is gone. Carved away.

That moment is why I make reduction linocuts.

This is for anyone who has looked at one of my prints and wondered what happened before it arrived on the wall. Quite a lot, as it turns out. All of it by hand, in sequence, with no way to correct a mistake or reprint a copy.

What is a reduction linocut?

Linocut printmaking uses a block of linoleum as a printing surface. I carve into the surface to remove material, ink what remains, and press paper onto the block to transfer the image.

A reduction linocut uses a single block for every colour in the print. I carve a little, then print. Carve a little more, then print again. With each round of carving, more of the block disappears. By the time I pull the final dark colour, the block has been so extensively carved that it can never be used again.

The edition is limited by the process itself, not by a decision I make.

I explain this in more detail in Why Are Reduction Linocuts Limited Editions?

Why I work this way

My first real encounter with printmaking was during a university trip to Tate Liverpool. I was completely caught off guard by the quality of the marks, and by the way a printed impression could feel both precise and alive. Something about the process stayed with me, and afterwards I began seeking out opportunities to learn more.

When I eventually tried reduction linocut, something settled. I loved the simplicity of working from a single block, the freedom of mixing and building colour, and above all the carving itself, which I find meditative in a way that is difficult to describe but impossible to give up.

My studio is at home in the Malvern Hills. After my son was born in 2012 I began working full-time as an artist. Reduction linocut fits this life well. One block, one space, complete focus.

The process, step by step

Drawing

Every print starts with drawing. I often sketch while I’m out in the landscape, noticing the shape of a particular tree, the way the hills meet the sky, or the colours of a field at a certain time of year. Back in the studio, those observations begin to come together. I might take a tree from one sketch, hills from another, or change the position of a path or cottage until the composition feels right. The finished image isn’t a record of one particular view, but a landscape built from places and details I have noticed along the way.

Once I’m happy with the composition, that drawing becomes the starting point for the lino block. I transfer it onto the lino in reverse, ready for carving, because the image will print as a mirror image.

Planning the colour sequence

This is the stage that takes longest, and it happens before a single cut is made. Because each carving permanently removes what was there before, the full sequence of colours has to be planned before I begin.

The order is not fixed. Sometimes I work from light to dark, sometimes dark to light, sometimes in a sequence that only makes sense for that particular print - depending on the effect I am after or what the image needs. What matters is that the plan is made in advance, and committed to. Once I start carving, it cannot be changed.

I make small colour studies on scraps of the same archival paper I use for the edition, testing each ink mix until the sequence feels right.

That testing is the thinking. The carving is just following through.

First carving

I carve away everything that should stay the colour of the paper - the areas I want to protect from the first ink pass. Which areas those are depends entirely on the sequence I have planned.

I use hand gouges throughout. V-tools for fine detail and lines, U-gouges for broader areas. Every mark is deliberate. There is no undo.

First printing

The block is inked with the first colour and printed across the full edition, one sheet at a time. I work on a small press in my studio, applying pressure evenly to transfer the ink.

Registration matters here. The paper has to line up in exactly the same position every time. Any shift between passes shows in the finished print.

After the first colour has been printed across the edition, I return to the block and begin carving for the next layer. The printed sheets are left to dry while I work.

Second carving, and every round that follows

Now I carve away everything that should stay the first colour. Then ink with the second colour and print the full edition again. Then carve again. Then print again.

Each round removes more material. Each round commits the print further. With each pass the image becomes more itself - though where it is heading is something only I can see until the final colour is down.

For a print with five or six colours, this takes several days. Ink has to dry fully between passes. There is no shortcut.

The final printing

After the last pass, the block is finished. Not put away. Finished. There is nothing left to print with.

The edition is complete. Every copy that will ever exist of that image has been made.

Why no two prints are identical

Even within a single edition, no two prints are the same. The pressure of each printing, the viscosity of the ink on a given day, the humidity in the studio. The variation is small, but it is real. Each print is a unique object.

And when the edition sells out, that is genuinely the end. I cannot reprint. I cannot extend the edition. The block no longer exists.

This is not a marketing claim. It is simply how the process works.

One last thing

Before I knew anything about printmaking, I visited the ancient city of Persepolis in Iran. I remember standing among carvings made more than two thousand years ago and being struck by the idea of an image being created by cutting into a surface. There was something about those marks, and their permanence, that stayed with me.

Years later, when I found printmaking and began carving lino myself, I recognised something of that same attraction. The materials and purpose are completely different, of course, but I think the physical act of making a mark by removing material has fascinated me ever since.

The Malvern Hills are my home now, and the landscape I return to most. It changes so slowly and so completely, season by season, morning by afternoon, that I doubt I will ever run out of things to notice. Each print is an attempt to hold one version of it still.

You can browse my original linocut prints here.