I began experimenting with marks on lino last week and recorded things as I worked using photograph’s. I wanted to make sure I recorded what tools I used, so what follows is sort of a record of that using photo’s and I’ll add my commentary on how the marks look/what was a success/failure and how I might use those tools in the future…

I thought it would be interesting to see if scrapping the lino with the other end of the hammer would create a faded/half tone print when inked.

I tried to wiggle this tiny screwdriver, as well as drag/scratch it into the lino and stab it into the surface to get a range of marks.

I tried little cross marks and single lines by stabbing this into the lino, rather than scratching as done previously.

Give the edge of this screwdriver I had an idea that scraping could give a nice broad line, almost like a paint brush stroke on the lino.

I knew this craft knife would give fine lines, so just let myself scratch the surface with the knife and hatch over the lines in the other direction. I did a few little digs into the surface too, it sort of gives a stippled effect.

As the protractor was less important to me than the craft knife I experimented by wiggling the protractor across the lino. I also created little dots using the tip. I like the delicate nature of these marks.

I saw this and it reminded me of how fields look once they’ve been harvested and lines remain. Seeing as I’ll probably do something landscape based in the future it seemed worth a try!

Below are some photo’s of tools which I had selected initially for marking making but found that I couldn’t get any strong marks out of using them:

I tried using a hammer to hit an impression of these objects into warm lino, it didn’t have any impact on the surface of the lino. So I used different tools instead.

I wanted to use the blade of these to cut into the lino thinking that it could make an interesting pattern, but I was unable to really cut into the lino as It was impossible to get the scissors at the right angle to cut into the lino effectively.

I’ll write about the results of printing in another post.