Once I had cut away/cleaned up my lino blocks to a point at which I felt they’d produce clean prints I began the process of doing my first few multi block prints. I wanted to try them on a few different types of paper, so cut my paper to size and a jig to sink the blocks into to aid proper registration first, before printing. 

Having set up my jig and got my papers I began printing. I knew printing the background in black (as the original design had intended) would mean that the lightest red layer (third layer) would be only partially visible so I changed the colours of the design that I would print. I wanted a grey/beige base layer and to keep the blue and cherry red of the 2nd and 3rd layers.

I found creating the colour beige/grey quite tricky as mixing the oil based ink is tricky, I often end up with much more ink on the printing plate than I wanted. Not sure quite how to improve that at the moment.

Multi block print on Japanese printing paper

I think this printed fairly well, it’s not 100% perfect in terms of registration but the little edge of white around the smaller feathers is actually quite a nice little border. There’s some red lines in the top right hand corner that I’d rather weren’t there so I’ll cut some more of that layer away when I re-print. I’m also not sure about the beige, I’d prefer a grey colour.

Multi block print on Cartridge Printing paper

I like the way this looks printed on the slightly thicker cartridge paper. In theory it should look clearer on the thinner Japanese paper but it’s got a nice level of ink on this print. Maybe it’s using the jig and bit more pressure that’s helped it to print well.

Multi block print on brown paper

This as you can see it only a two layer print I didn’t complete the third layer as I thought it wouldn’t improve the quality of the print. I don’t think this worked very well. The colour is too pale (of the background layer) against the brown paper. I know I wouldn’t do it like this again!

I’m going to clean up the red layer lino by cutting some more away, and then try printing again with a grey back ground layer before then trying a different colour scheme.

Possible colour scheme’s are: Beige/lime green/yellow, grey/purple/yellow, blue/red/grey.