cuts

I first got into making linocuts and block prints when I started college. I loved (and still love) giving gifts, writing cards, sending friends my art and care packages, etc. For this reason, block prints were a great way to make my own greeting cards. Later I would combine my block prints with zines.

These are some of the first linocuts I ever made, shown as block prints. A pseudo-traditional norse dragon (head's a little too big), a ship at sea and the norse valknut. I will often choose to not "clean" the print to leave behind the grain effect. This can be done to add to the "primitive/messy" look, or it can be done with artistic intent (like the spiral effect on the valknut).

I started doing figures, or "busts." This one shows Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant, a mysterious figure from early Minnesota history. "Our Founder" references the fact that the area of St. Paul was once called "Pig's Eye" in his honor, though of course other people have been in the area for much longer than Europeans.

When I make the block prints, it sometimes takes a few tries to get it looking right. Here, the left is a little faint due to not using enough ink, or not pressing hard enough to transfer the ink. The version on the right uses a little more ink than I would consider "perfect," but it makes a cleaner and more solid print. Tiny details, like the letters "DER" in "FOUNDER" have breaks and could be redone if I'm feeling like a stickler.

More busts. Here are St. Peter and St. Paul, who never visited Minnesota as far as I know but gave their names to two of our larger cities. St. Peter, Minneapolis and St. Paul all vied to become Minnesota's state capitol, with St. Paul winning out due to overt espionage and treachery (there's a fascinating history there, look it up!). I'm not particularly religious but find it interesting that the historical St. Paul and St. Peter also had their famous spat at Antioch, much like the cities sharing their names would lock horns centuries later.

On the right, I experimented overlaying red and gold prints of St. Paul. It came out looking a little cursed but I enjoy the "seeing double" effect.

If you're not very technically skilled but enjoy a cartoony style, copying old comic strips makes for a great exercise. Thick black lines and solid colors lend themselves really well to block printing and linocuts. Here we have Sluggo from the Nancy comic strips dismayed at the overwhelming neediness of cats. Again, it sometimes takes a few prints to get it looking right. Too little ink on the right, but just enough to be decipherable.

As an aside, I would strongly recommend reading Nancy comic strips in our current era. At the time it was viewed similar to how we see Garfield now (sometimes charming, often overdone and kitsch). Now I see it as an endearing and sincere look into the culture of the 20s-80s (it had a very long run) and many of the earlier gags are dated enough to feel "fresh" again, making reference to the Great Depression, Fascism, the Baby Boom, etc.

These are a few of the prints I made for my zines. My zine "Fly High, Yoshi!" involves me inking that block print on every cover. I enjoy "reproducing" foreign characters/letters/scripts even when I don't speak or read the language. It's a great way to get better at making precise cuts and transferring what you visualize to the medium. I will test if my writing is legible by running it through Google Translate's camera function which will translate text from a photo. If the translation is off, I probably messed up the characters somehow.

A golden tree, taken from traditional Norwegian Folk art painted on the side of stave church somewhere. I like to think it's Yggdrasil. On the right is a print I made a long time ago after a trip to D.C., based on a statue of George Washington at the Smithsonian. The founding fathers had a weird "Roman Emporers" phase. Some things never change.

James Jerome Hill. Genius, or disturbed? In the mythology of Minnesota historical figures, he's the closest thing we have to the evil Monopoly man. The quote is allegedly real, though it's always hard to know with these things. He built a lovely cathedral, though.