Here's a wonderful step by step guide to lino print portraits by artist, teacher and contestant on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year Lucy Bartholomew. Here Lucy gives us a wonderful insight here into how she approach’s portraiture and a fascinating look at the medium of lino.
Over to you Lucy!
The images above are single-layer lino print portraits, printed with black ink on white paper. The image on the left is my portrait of Nish Kumar, completed in four hours on Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year. The additional images are prints that I made before and after participating in the show, and the following step-by-step guide explains the process that I use to create these prints.
Stage 1: Choosing your Subject
Begin by selecting a subject for your portrait. You might be lucky enough to have someone who will sit for you to draw from life, or you might want to work from a photo. In either case, the most important aspect to consider when setting up your image/model is lighting. You will need to work with dramatically contrasting tonal values (light and shade) when drawing out and carving your portrait, so it really helps if you have a clearly identifiable light source, perhaps coming in from a side/ diagonal angle. This type of lighting can easily be achieved by asking someone to pose near a window, turning one side of their face towards daylight, or you could use an artificial light such as a table lamp.
When teaching beginners, I often also recommend that they try editing their chosen photo using any basic photo editing software (perhaps a phone app) to create a stylised, black and white, high contrast image, like the examples below. This can help you to visualise what a ‘high contrast’ version of your portrait might look like. It is not essential to edit the photo, but might help if you are struggling with the concept of exaggerating tonal values.
Creating a Pencil Portrait on Tracing Paper
Once you have chosen your subject, take a sheet of tracing paper the same size as your lino (here I am working on A4), and start drawing. Begin with an HB pencil for sharp lines. Sketch in your outline shapes, not pressing too hard at first, and taking care with proportions. The more accurate your proportions, the more likely you are to achieve ‘a likeness’ (if, indeed, that is your primary goal). If you are confident with your drawing skills, try to work free-hand, but you could consider using a grid or even tracing over the outlines of your photograph if you are nervous about ‘getting it right’.
Once you are happy with the outline shape of the face and features, you will need to start blocking in tonal values. I switch to a 4B pencil (or similar) at this stage because the softer, darker graphite helps to create a wider range of tones. Also, the darker graphite transfers nicely onto lino (see stage 3).
In terms of how you actually shade your portrait drawing, there are two key factors to think about:
Tonal Values
Creating a single-layer lino print portrait requires a dramatically tonal approach to drawing. Some lino printmakers will simplify the face, using only black sections against white sections to create bold, graphic prints. I like to try to create transitions between the darkest and lightest tones by experimenting with different carving techniques, but subtle differentiation between tones is not easy. There is always an element of simplification and stylisation when it comes to translating the portrait drawing into a lino carving (see stage 4) so it helps if the drawing mimics the intended style of carving. When shading the face, therefore, I try to work with strong, bold lines, exaggerating shadows where I see them, sometimes blocking them in completely black, and not trying to blend too subtly or smoothly between different tonal valuess.
Mark-Making
I try to add texture and variety to my prints by experimenting with mark-making and varying the density of marks to create tonal graduation. The more visible and obvious the shaded lines are on your drawing, the more helpful those lines become when trying to decide how to go about carving your portrait. When shading, I try to use a variety of lengths and shapes of mark, reflecting the different surface textures that I see. I also use directional shading as a key device - shading in the direction of the contours of the face, so that the lines describe its three-dimensional form in a bold, exaggerated style.
Here are a series of progress photos of a preparation drawing for a lino print:
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