I’ve been taking classes focused on drypoint and collagraph – basically intaglio techniques, where the ink you’re trying to get on paper is in the grooves, where you’ve cut. So you push the ink into those grooves and wipe the excess ink from the plate.
It’s a wonderful process and making the plates isn’t expensive or hard and at its most basic requires no more than plastic and a sharp pointy thing to make marks on the plastic. But to get an image you need a lot of pressure, essentially a printing press. They aren’t cheap.
Linoprint is a relief technique where you cut away the negative space and pick up the ink on the surface of the plate. You don’t really need a press to get a pretty decent image, you just need a little bit of pressure. So it’s an easier technique to do at home. Even if you do need a press, they aren’t as expensive. I’ve signed up to do a class next week.
But I’ve also signed up to send 50 postcards to Ohio voters. There’s an election coming up, you may have heard. It matters. It really matters. We can’t afford to have a dictator, not even for one day. I signed up through a service that provides a message and voter addresses. But you supply the postcards and the postage.
Handwritten postcards. The handwritten part really makes a difference. It’s a personal request to vote, so it needs to feel personal. What could be more personal than handwritten, hand printed original design? So I decided to go ahead and make some with a linocut beginner print I bought 2nd hand. How hard could it be?
You too can drop a line!
Here are a few organizations where you can sign up to send postcards.
A note on eligibility: I live in the UK, but I’m American. If you are not American, please don’t just sign up for one of these efforts. We have really strict campaign laws about foreign contributions, but even if writing to people may or may not be ok, it’s not a good look and may do more harm than good.
Printing up the postcards
My first design was the one with the stripes on the bottom. The V and the O are meant to be elements of the Ohio flag. I signed up for a campaign that supports Ohio Senator Sherod Brown and I wanted something that felt Ohio-ish, especially since I’ll be posting these from Tennessee. But I found it really difficult to get a clear cut on the stars. The 2nd one is the meant to be a Buckeye (horse chestnut) and leaf – but I don’t think it came out that well. And it looks maybe a little bit like a pot leaf, but that’s potentially eye catching. And the 3rd one I did was the bunting version. And I really like that one.
I’ve printed 32 good-enough ones for now. I want to progess a little bit further and try to get more than one colour in there. So I don’t think I’ll print anymore until I’ve written my postcards.
A note on process: I used Schminke college water based ink in dark blue. I’ve been using intaglio inks which are little stickier so I didn’t love the feel of this ink. It was pretty cheap and it doesn’t have to last forever.
