Lino Print – Adding Colour by Painting

So far, my prints have been just in one colour. I really like the simplicity and am often drawn to single colour prints myself. I also wanted to master lino printing before I thought about adding colour to my artwork. I haven’t mastered it but I’m ready to start injecting some!

This print seemed like the perfect piece of art to add colour in the wallpaper background. I’ve thought about adding chine collé, but struggled to work out how to place it behind the individual flowers. So today I decided to just have some fun and paint the flowers with watercolours. It worked really well but I noticed that the paper warped very slightly when I added watercolour. I’m going to try ironing it to see if that flattens it again.

Here it is with and without colour:

Next I’m going to prepare another lino block so that I can print a second layer with just the flowers. Or maybe I’ll just stick to painting the flowers, it was fun! Sometimes I just want to move on to the next print!

I think my next lino print is going to be based on a sketch I did on holiday of Lee Miller. I want to keep it quite small and try adding lots of texture, using small lino tools. Watch this space!