Weekend Project: Octopus Print

Written by candra on .

This weekend’s project was a linocut of an octopus. It’s carved from a 12″ x 12″ piece of unmounted linoleum. I started with a pencil drawing on the linoleum, which I then carved.

octopus linocut pencil drawing

octopus linoleum carving in progress

carved octopus linoleum block

Once the block was carved I did a test print.

octopus test print

I’m not entirely satisfied with the perspective. I shortened one of the tentacles to try to balance it out better, then did another print.

octopus print

I added some LEDs to a print to see what it would look like to light up the eyes.

paper LEDs

Octopus print with lit up eyes

I’m mostly self-taught with linoleum carving. I took a class, once, on carving eraser stamps, which uses a softer medium; but I haven’t had formal instruction in working with linoleum. One of the things I want to work on is using hatching for shading effects. I tried to do some of that with this project, but I definitely need more practice.