Inky in the Sky with Diamonds

Hi! I'm Sky (He/Him) and my partner is Diamond (She/Her). This blog will mostly feature lino cut pieces that I have carved as well as information about my process, new stuff I'm working on and potentially pet pictures or anything else creative I might endeavor. I'll also include things that Diamond has made and things we do together.

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Diamond made a lino cut of an ornament and used some of my smaller lino cuts to fill it.

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Mushrooms (I had to, it's impossible to do lino art and not do mushrooms at least once).

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More linos made with off cuts.

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I made a lot of smaller lino cuts trying to make use of my off cuts.

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I made gingerbread houses.

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I made dwarves.

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This was another gift idea that we never followed through on. Diamond has a friend who did their undergrad studies at UC Santa Cruz. I drew the banana and the heart but made the banana slug by removing the shell from the snail I did based on Animals in the Pond by DK.

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In November Diamond wanted to try to make some gifts for friends she made in Peru while doing Peace Corps. She asked me to do a llama and an alpaca. I worked on them while off from work during Thanksgiving but we never got around to making anything to send as gifts. I had just gotten a set of Power Grip Carving Tools and was teaching myself how to make small circles using the 3mm u gouge. As you can see on the llama, I probably should have practiced more before I got started.

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This is based on the TRex Softball Team logo. I actually did this one twice. I started to carve out the body and realized it would take a lot of work and decided to give it scales. I really liked the scales but didn't like the bald spots on the face that I made before changing my mind. I stamped it onto a new block, hence why they are facing different directions and did the scales on the whole body. I later went back and carved out the scales of the original to create the outline.

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I like to take my lino cutting with me when I travel, am going to be in a social setting or just to get out of the house. On this day I found a sunny table at one of the local libraries. I have a pretty compact and light set-up that can fit in my messenger bag with my laptop and a book or on its' own in a small canvas bag.

- Old Plastic Cutting Board (used as a work surface to protect the table) - 3 or 4 Lino Blocks - Black Stamp Pad - Tin Can (this doubles as a way of transporting my tools and as a place to put off cuts and shavings) - Box Cutter (I make a lot of really small carvings that only use a portion of the block, I use this to cut the blocks into smaller pieces and to trim around carvings to reduce noise) - Speedball Lino Cutter (like many, I learned on the Speedball and used it exclusively for months, nowadays, I don't often use the other tips but I still use the #1/small v all the time) - Set of 5 Power Grip Carving Tools (my partner bought me a set of 5 as a gift, I use the u gouges and straight chisel a lot, the v parting tool occasionally and the skew chisel rarely) - Power Grip 1.5mm V Chisel (I bought this for myself thinking it would be a replacement for the Speedball when doing detail work, but the bevel is a little big and I prefer using the Speedball) - Ultra Fine Tip Sharpie (I use it when I want extra contrast) - Chisel Tip Sharpie (I'll trace over a line with this if I want it to have more weight)

Other materials I almost always carry with me that aren't shown here: - Index Cards - Pencils - Fine Tip Sharpie - Metal Ruler - A Piece of Tracing Paper

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I mentioned that my new lino blocks are really soft so I switched from drawing directly onto them to using tracing paper. Diamond picked out a bunch and traced them and I carved them. She also did some based off illustrations from children's books and printed a bunch off the internet. For the print outs, I'll forego the tracing paper and transfer the image directly off the printer paper.

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Diamond has all these little pre-cut rectangles of fabric. She has started using some of my linos make prints on the fabric.

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A couple of months after the lino cutting class Diamond and I took an intro to screen printing class. I did a grumpy cat, Diamond did a happy whale.

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Inspired by Omar Elshami.

This was probably the last print where I was intentionally trying to reduce negative space. I decided I kind of liked the style I had developed where I was removing most of the material to create outlines.

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The boom box was inspired by ChrisBourkeArt and the cassette is from Yuliya Zaitseva.

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The airplane is based on a design by viilou.

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