Alongside book-making and painting, Karen is an experienced printmaker who uses lino to make monochrome figurative relief prints. Linocut or lino printing is a printmaking technique and variant of woodcut printing where you carve into a piece of linoleum to create a plate ready to ink up and make an infinite number of prints with on paper or fabrics.

Like most printmaking techniques, it’s quite a process-heavy way of making art and needs a bit of guidance – but once you know what you’re doing, it’s one of the most rewarding. Karen Strong is a Brighton based artist with lots of experience in printmaking using lino, especially with fashion and figurative imagery. In this workshop, she’ll guide you through each step of the lino printing process and you’ll take home your very own print ready to frame along with the skills to keep on lino printing at home.

What’s included?

This is a three hour workshop with a short break in the middle. It includes all the materials you’ll need:

• A small linoleum block and a spare to take home with you
• Use of a range of carving tools, rollers, inks and lino scraps to practice on
• A variety of paper, card, tags etc to print onto
• Tea/coffee & cake

What the workshop covers

• Carving techniques
• Positive / negative space
• Transferring an image to the lino
• Inking up the plate
• Image registration
• How to add multiple layers to your prints

You’ll be guided through each step of the process with tips on how to carry on printmaking at home with alternative and cost-effective materials.

How to prepare for the workshop

Come to the workshop with 2-3 A6 print-outs of images you’d like to turn into a print. These could be from fashion magazines or your own images… figures or anything you like. When choosing your imagery, consider a mix of textures, lines and empty space.

Don’t worry if you’re not sure what to bring, there will be lots of samples here to choose from too.

Venue & accessibility

Clarkes of Sussex is an art shop in the town centre and has a workshop space upstairs running all kinds of creative classes and courses.

Unfortunately, there is no lift in the building and so this workshop is not wheelchair accessible or right for you if you struggle with stairs.

Just get in touch if you have any other special requirements.

karenstrongart.com | karenstrong@hotmail.com | @karen.strong.artist