How a Reduction Linocut Print Is Made

A single block. Multiple carvings. One chance to get it right.

Every print starts somewhere outside. A walk, a particular view, a moment in the landscape I want to hold onto. I draw until the composition feels right, then transfer the image onto the lino block in reverse, because everything in printmaking prints as its mirror image.

Then the carving begins.

I start by carving away everything that should stay the colour of the paper. Once that first carving is done, I ink the block and print the full edition, every copy one by one. I always print a few extra at this stage to use as proofs, so I can test ideas and check colours as the print develops. From there, the sequence of colours is planned in advance but not fixed in one direction. Sometimes I work light to dark, sometimes the other way, depending on what the image needs.

Then I wait. The ink has to dry completely before the next layer goes down, so while one colour is drying I am already carving the next. There is always something to do.

Planning the colour sequence matters enormously. I think it through carefully before I start, but sometimes a colour I planned does not quite work once it is on paper. When that happens I have to change direction, rethink the next layer and adjust the sequence. That kind of decision-making in the middle of a print is part of what makes each edition its own thing.

Registration is something I think about constantly. Every time the paper goes back onto the block for a new colour, it has to land in exactly the same position. A small shift shows. Getting this right across a whole edition, layer after layer, is one of the most demanding parts of the process.

I go through the same sequence for every colour. Carve, ink, print the full edition, wait, then carve again. By the time the final layer is down, not much of the original block is left. The carving has taken most of it. What remains goes back on the shelf, but it could not print another edition even if I wanted it to.

That is the nature of a reduction linocut. The block that made the print no longer exists. Every copy in the edition was made during that one sequence of carvings, and that is all there will ever be. Each print is hand-signed, numbered and unique. When the edition sells out, that is genuinely the end. Not a marketing decision. Just how the process works.

I am a published contributor to Linocut Printmaking by 3dtotal Publishing, where I wrote two reduction print tutorials. But the process I have described here is simply how I work, in a studio at home in the Malvern Hills, one print at a time.