My blog

Carving the Lino Block: How I Turn a Drawing Into a Linocut Print

How I Turn a Drawing Into a Lino Block For My Linocut Prints Of all the stages that go into a print, carving is where the drawing becomes something real. A flat sketch is transformed into a physical block that can be inked and printed, and it’s at this stage that a design either comes to life or quietly falls apart. The block I start with Before any of that, it’s worth a word about the block itself, because it’s a lovelier material than most people expect. Most of my prints are carved into traditional artist’s lino — the classic sort printmakers have used since the 1890s. Despite the slightly industrial name, it’s a genuinely natural product: solidified linseed oil (pressed from flax), pine rosin, finely ground cork and wood, and a little limestone, all set onto a woven hessian backing. The word linoleum even comes from the Latin for flax and oil. The blocks I use are around 3.2mm thick with a smooth surface, non-toxic, and take both oil- and water-based inks happily. For some pieces, though, I use Japanese vinyl instead. Developed specifically for printmaking, it has a slightly softer, more consistent surface that allows for exceptionally fine detail and delicate, flowing cuts. It carves differently from traditional lino, but shares the same satisfying process of revealing an image by removing everything that won’t print. I choose between the two materials depending on the character I want the finished print to have. I like that both materials have their own quiet logic in my work. Traditional lino has a direct connection to the natural world, made largely from renewable plant-based ingredients, while Japanese vinyl offers a precision that’s perfect for more intricate designs. Whether I’m carving lino or vinyl, there’s something deeply satisfying about creating images of plants and wildlife through a slow, hand-carved process. For nature-inspired prints, it feels like exactly the right place to begin. Everything happens in reverse The first thing to get your head around is that a linocut prints as a mirror image. Whatever I carve into the block appears reversed on the paper, so before I cut a single line I transfer my drawing onto the lino the “wrong” way round using the simple pencil-and-tracing-paper method. With many of my botanical linocut designs, the natural symmetry of leaves and flowers means the reversal is barely noticeable. Even so, it’s a step I never skip. It’s much easier to spend a few minutes flipping the design at the start than to realise halfway through carving that everything is facing the wrong way — especially if your design includes text, which would otherwise print back to front. Carving away, not drawing on This is the mental shift that makes linocut what it is. Every cut is about defining the image by taking material away rather than adding to it. Anything I carve away stays free of ink and prints as the white of the paper; everything I leave standing holds the ink and becomes the image. So carving is really a series of decisions about what to keep. With a seed head or a sprig of leaves, I’m constantly choosing which lines earn their place and which can go, until only the essential shapes are left raised. That interplay between the carved and uncarved areas — the positive and negative space — is exactly where linocut gets its bold, graphic character, and it’s the quality I lean into most in my work The tools, and the marks they leave I carve with a small set of gouges, and each one leaves a different kind of mark. A fine V-shaped tool cuts sharp, narrow lines — ideal for outlines and delicate detail. Wider U-shaped tools scoop away broader channels and clear the larger open areas of background efficiently. For the very smallest details, I’ll switch to a fine knife. A lot of the craft is simply matching the tool to the job: a crisp botanical outline wants a different blade from a soft, cleared background. I also vary the depth and width of a cut to change the weight of a line, which is how a design gains rhythm rather than looking flat and uniform. Little of this is fixed — every block teaches you something new about which mark does what. Botanicals and wildlife ask for different things My botanical prints tend to be about clean, confident lines: the curve of a stem, the edge of a petal, the structure of a leaf. There the carving is precise and fairly restrained, letting the shapes speak for themselves. Wildlife is a different challenge. When I’m carving a hedgehog, a badger or a garden bird, the goal is character — and the temptation is to over-carve, adding fussy marks to explain every detail. I try to resist that. A few well-placed cuts to suggest fur or feathers usually does far more than a hundred anxious ones, and it keeps the animal feeling alive rather than laboured. Knowing when to stop is honestly half the skill. Slow, sharp, and no going back Carving rewards patience more than anything else. You can always take a little more lino away, but you can never put it back — so I work slowly, starting with shallow, cautious cuts and deepening only where I need to. Rushing is how mistakes happen. Sharp tools matter enormously here too. A blunt gouge tears rather than glides, ruins a clean line and is far more likely to slip, so I sharpen as I go. And I always carve in a direction away from my other hand — a small habit that saves a lot of grief. Once the block is fully carved, cleaned up and proofed, it’s ready to ink and print — but by then the hardest thinking is already done. The quiet part I look forward to For all the technical detail, carving is the stage I find most absorbing. It’s slow, focused and a little meditative — just me, a

Nature Inspiration Behind My Linocut Prints

Where My Designs Come From: Finding Inspiration in Nature People sometimes imagine I sit down with a grand plan for each print. The truth is a lot less tidy. Most of my designs start with something small and ordinary that happened to catch my eye — a seed head, the shape of a particular leaf, a plant leaning over a wall on an everyday walk. I’m Grace, a linocut printmaker in Sheffield, and nearly everything I make comes from the natural world close to home. Here’s a bit about where the ideas actually come from. I look for the small things, not the grand views I’m not the sort of artist chasing dramatic landscapes or big skies. What tends to stop me is far more everyday: the structure of a teasel, the way petals overlap, a cluster of berries in a hedgerow. Sheffield is surrounded by green — parks, gardens, woodland edges, the Peak District just up the road — but honestly, some of my favourite starting points are things most people walk straight past. I think that comes from years of paying attention to detail. Before printmaking I worked with architecture, sewing and photography, and all three trained me to notice line, shape and composition. So when I look at a plant, I’m half seeing the plant and half seeing the print it could become — where the bold shapes are, where the contrast falls, what I’d keep and what I’d leave out. Why botanicals keep pulling me back Flowers and plants suit linocut beautifully, which is a big part of why I keep returning to them. A stem, a leaf, a seed head — these are strong, graphic shapes to begin with, and they translate really well into the clean lines and bold contrast that define my work. There’s also endless variety. Even a single plant gives me dozens of directions: the tight spiral of a fern unfurling, the papery texture of a poppy, the neat symmetry of lily of the valley. Some designs come from plants I’ve grown myself; others from something spotted on a walk that I couldn’t stop thinking about. I could carve botanicals for years and never run out of ideas — and I probably will. Bringing in the wildlife Alongside the botanical prints, I love drawing in the animals and birds that share those same spaces. A hedgehog, a horse, a badger and a garden bird — there’s real character in wildlife, and the challenge is capturing that character in simple, confident shapes rather than lots of fussy detail. That restraint is the fun part. Linocut doesn’t let you hide behind fine shading, so I have to work out what actually makes each animal feel instantly recognisable, and get it across with as few marks as possible. When it works, a pared-back print can feel more alive than a heavily detailed one — and pairing wildlife with the plants around it often tells a fuller little story. Following the seasons A lot of what I make is quietly tied to the time of year. Snowdrops and early bulbs in late winter, blossom and fresh growth in spring, seed heads and berries as things start to fade. I don’t plan it too rigidly, but whatever’s growing around me naturally shapes what I feel like carving next. I like that this keeps the work honest. Rather than inventing an idealised flower, I’m usually responding to something I’ve genuinely seen recently — which, I hope, is part of why the finished prints feel grounded rather than generic. It also means the collection shifts gently through the year, a bit like the seasons themselves. From a passing glance to a finished block Not every idea survives, and that’s fine. I collect far more references than I ever use — photos, quick sketches, the odd interesting leaf — and most never make it to the lino. The ones that do are usually the shapes I can’t stop thinking about: designs with a clear silhouette and a bit of quiet personality. From there it’s a slow process of simplifying, testing and carving, until the print holds only what it needs and nothing more. That, really, is the heart of how I work — starting with something real from the natural world, then gradually stripping it back until it’s bold enough to stand on its own. If any of that resonates, you’ll find where these ideas end up over in the shop — a growing collection of botanical and wildlife linocut prints, each one traced back to something small and green that first caught my eye. Come and say hello If you’ve read this far, thank you — it genuinely means a lot that you’re curious about how these prints come together. I share new designs, works in progress and the occasional finished piece over on Instagram @gracewong_art, and I always enjoy hearing which plants or animals you’d like to see next. Part of the joy of working this way is knowing the prints end up somewhere they’re wanted — so please do say hello, whether that’s here, in the shop, or in person at a market or gallery with the work right in front of you. That closes on a warm, personal note without repeating the shop CTA above it, and the market/gallery mention ties in naturally with the Events category you’re setting up. Kept it to Grace’s real footing — no claims about customer suggestions shaping designs, just an open invitation.

How Each Print Is Made — A Look Inside My Linocut Print Process

Every print in my shop begins as a blank sheet of lino and a quiet afternoon at my table. I’m Grace, a linocut printmaker based in Sheffield, and I hand-carve and hand-print every piece myself. People often ask what actually goes into a single print, so I wanted to open the studio door and walk you through it — from the first sketch right through to the finished, signed print that arrives at your door. I discovered linocut back in 2021, and it quickly became the part of my week I look forward to most. There’s something about the process — slow, tactile, a little unpredictable — that I find genuinely calming. Here’s how it all comes together First, a quick word on what a linocut is A linocut is a form of relief printing. The design is carved by hand into a block of linoleum, then ink is rolled onto the raised surface that’s left behind and pressed onto paper. Anything I carve away stays ink-free and shows up as the white of the paper; everything I leave standing holds the ink and becomes the image. It’s a bit like making your own detailed stamp — except every stage is done by hand, and the result is a bold, characterful print you simply can’t get any other way. That handmade quality is the whole point for me. These aren’t posters or digital copies. Each one is an original, hand-printed linocut. It starts with the natural world Almost everything I make begins outdoors. I’m drawn to the quiet beauty of the natural world — woodland walks, hedgerow flowers, the shift from one season to the next. I sketch the shapes that catch my eye: the curve of a stem, the pattern of petals, the structure of a leaf. My style leans towards clean lines, bold contrast and a sense of joyful simplicity, so I spend a fair bit of time paring a design back to its essentials before anything is carved. My background in architecture, sewing and photography probably feeds into that instinct for line and composition. Once I’m happy with a drawing, I transfer it onto the lino block, ready for the part I love most. Carving the block by hand This is the slow, meditative heart of linocut, and honestly it’s my favourite way to switch off from everything else. Using a set of small gouges, I carve away everything that won’t hold ink. Fine V-shaped tools handle the delicate outlines and the detail; wider U-shaped tools clear the larger open areas. Every line is carved by hand, one cut at a time — and there’s no undo button, so it pays to slow down and stay in the moment. That focus is exactly what I love about it. Carving asks me to concentrate on nothing but the block in front of me, and I find that incredibly grounding. A single block can take anywhere from a couple of hours to many sittings spread across several days, depending on how intricate the design is. I sharpen my tools as I go to keep every line crisp and clean. It’s absorbing, careful work, and there’s real satisfaction in watching a design slowly emerge from a plain grey block. Inking and printing — one piece at a time Once the block is carved, it’s time to bring it to life. I roll a thin, even layer of ink across the raised surface using a hand roller called a brayer. You can actually hear it hiss when the ink is at just the right consistency — one of those small, satisfying signals that things are going well. Then I lay my printing paper carefully over the inked block and apply firm, even pressure to transfer the image, either by hand-burnishing or using my printing press. Peeling the paper back to reveal a fresh print never gets old. After all these years, it’s still the moment I look forward to every single time. Here’s the part that makes every piece special: the block only holds enough ink for one print, so I re-ink and print each one individually. Tiny variations in ink coverage and pressure mean no two prints are ever quite identical. Each one is its own small original — pressed by hand rather than run off a machine — which is exactly why I love working this way. Drying, signing and limited editions Fresh prints need time to settle before they can be handled. I hang or lay each one flat to dry, and oil-based inks in particular can take a good while to cure properly. Rushing this stage is the quickest way to smudge a print I’ve spent hours making, so patience is part of the process too. Once everything is dry, I check each print carefully, sign it, and add it to a limited or opened edition run. When a limited edition sells out, that’s it — the block is retired, and no more are made. It’s part of what makes owning an original linocut feel that little bit special. Why I do it this way I could make things faster. Plenty of art is reproduced at the click of a button these days, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But for me, the whole joy is in the making: the meditative carving, the satisfying pull of a clean print, the small imperfections that prove a human hand was involved at every stage. Because each print passes through my hands from start to finish — designing, carving, inking, printing, drying and signing — a finished piece carries all of that care with it. So when one of my botanical linocut prints ends up framed on your wall, I love knowing it began as a sketch of something growing outside, and travelled through every step by hand to get there. Thank you for taking the time to learn a little about how my prints are made, and for supporting handmade art — it genuinely means the world. If