Preparing for the print involved cutting/marking the three different surfaces: Polystyrene, Lino & Cutting Plastic. I tried to cut each piece to exactly the same size, a 12 cm square, but found that I only had enough cutting plastic to do a 11.5 cm square. Rather than rethink the design I hoped that if I aligned it right in the jig the 0.5 cm wouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Blocks before printing:

Polystyrene block before printing

I scored the Polystyrene block with a craft knife lightly to give the lines a subtle appearance and without cutting right through the whole surface.

Cutting Plastic before printing

I used lino cutting tools to cut the plastic away and make a few lines in the curtain area to make it clear there were folds.

Drawing design on Lino

I found drawing the design on the lino quite tricky as some of the finer details needed to remain clear. Some areas were left white like the back of the chair, even though I wanted to print them as a colour because I needed to still see where to make cross marks.

Lino surface cut, ready to print

I used a protractor to make the center of the flowers on the dress, a mini screwdriver to make the cross marks on the chair and normal lino tools to cut the rest of the lines/details.

Tools used to mark surfaces

From left to right: protractor, craft knife, mini screwdriver, lino cutting tools.

Last minute adjustments:

Polystyrene layer with areas covered by masking tape

I realised just before printing if I covered the whole of the polystyrene in ink and had areas of white in the person layer that the background layer would show through. I didn’t want this, so I thought that if I covered the area where the chair/person print would be with masking tape then I could avoid that happening.

Cutting Plastic with one area cut away

I also realised that one area of the cutting plastic would print on top of the background layer which I didn’t want as I didn’t think it would print well over the top. So I cut it away before printing to avoid that.