Elephant Linocut

I decided to make a linocut print for my Christmas card this year.  Above you can see the final print and below are photos of the linocut in process.  I really like using Safety-Kut for the carving block because it is so soft.  If you have never used it, it is like a giant eraser.

I ended up using oil-based ink which rolls beautifully and allows a long work time before drying out.  Some people like to use water-based ink because it cleans easily, but I use vegetable oil to clean with and it is not so bad.  The only other problem with oil-based ink is that it does take a few days to dry.  I think it helped that my house is really dry in the winter.  Plus I moved all the prints to dry on top of the radiator covers which I think helped speed the process.  By the end of the day every radiator in my house was covered in elephants!

Below you can see my dining room turned into crafting/printing room for a weekend.  I printed 108 and it took me all day.  Although it was exhausting, it was fun to see the table slowly fill up with prints.  I think that is why I like print-making.  In a very short amount of time you can create something where there was nothing before.  And look at the beautiful repetition (yay, yay, yay!).

After three or four days the prints were dry.  We packaged them up and sent them off into the world because seriously, who doesn't want to receive a cheery, red, linocut elephant in their mail box?