During my freshman year at art school, we had a project to utilize linocut and relief printing practices. We first had to write a short story based on a randomly generated phrase, mine was
"I'd rather be a bird than a fish"
After writing the short story, I had to sketch out some ideas. I wanted it to show the lock and tension between the fish and the duck, between predator and prey.
The sketch was then transferred onto the linoleum block using transfer paper.
Instead of block printing ink, we used watercolor, which really didn't make the prints look that good. I have over 20 prints that are scratchy and uneven, but they're a good base for embellishments.
I tried a few different ways to embellish. I had some chalk pastels that I wasn't very familiar with, so I experimented with those, but with the small size of the print it was very difficult, plus I had a very limited color set.
Then I tried something I was more familiar with: ink and watercolor.
