On Press: Mark Webber's Linocut, Part One

With everything prepped (finally!) the block is ready to be printed! It was a bit hairy setting it up at first. I was having a hard time getting the press to ink the block evenly. Also, linocuts eat up LOTS of ink so it was a challenge getting it to print as dark as I had envisioned it.

Here's one of the first test prints. As you can see, it wasn't printing evenly and parts were underinked.






















But...I was able to work out the kinks eventually and had a pretty successful first run on the vandercook! Here are some pics and you can check out more process photos on my flickr.


















Had to carefully cut out the heart since it will be printed in a different color with the new polymer plate that was made...



































Here's the final print, as you can see the difference from where I started. It will still have variations in inking but this is the nature of a linocut, so the perfectionist in me just had to give that a rest! I'm definitely happy with how the first press run turned out :) Hopefully it'll be smooth sailing for the second color on the little heart...


















For more info on Mark, visit his site at markandrewebber.com