I was talking with musician Curtis Chris Roman on the podcast this week. During the interview he told me about a thing he does on the side, making block prints.
What you do is, carve a design on a linoleum block, then roll ink on it, and make a print by pressing that on to something.
I saw some of his work he did on t-shirts and was kind of inspired by it.
The next day I went and got the materials to do one myself.
I’ve done screen printing in the past but it always seems such a pain in the ass. The emulsion, burning the image in the screen, squeegee the ink across the screen.
If you want to make another design you can set up another screen, or replace the design you have. All of that stuff always kept me from making new ones.
Print blocks, from what he told me, seemed like a way I could just make design blocks and reuse them whenever I wanted to. I liked that idea.
There still is the process of making the print, you have to carve it into the linoleum block by hand.
But now I can just keep it in a drawer or something and use it whenever I want, or make a couple more to choose from.