For the past 2 weeks at printmaking class, I've been learning what is known as the "reduction method" for lino-print (similar to woodcuts, except the cheap & soft linoleum sheet is used instead of wood). The idea is this:
(1) If you want to make an image with several colours, you start with a print of the lightest, for eg. pale yellow.
(2) Then you carve away the sections which you want to remain pale yellow. And you make a print using a darker colour (say red) on the exact same piece of paper.
(3) Them you carve away the sections you want to remain red, and you make another print using an even darker colour (say brown) on the exact same piece of paper.
reducing
As you continue to layer colours (from light to darkest) on that printed paper, the more your linoleum sheet is stripped away. I thought, what poetry! That as the image emerges on the paper, it disappears from your linoleum; and as the paper changes its form as a print, so the vessel and medium of that art reduces in substance, literally. But perhaps not metaphorically. Because between the print and the linoleum, the latter to me bears all the marks of time and effort.
It is for simple reasons like this that no matter how tired and late I am for printmaking class, it remains my favourite evening of the week.
a happy place
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