{"id":49865,"date":"2018-06-27T14:33:15","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T21:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/?p=49865"},"modified":"2024-04-17T06:27:28","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T13:27:28","slug":"linocut-graphics-and-effects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/linocut-graphics-and-effects","title":{"rendered":"Design Trend Report: Linocut Graphics and Effects"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re looking for a new design trend, there’s hardly anything more interesting than linocut<\/a> graphics and effects<\/strong>. As with all good design trends<\/a>, linocut graphics and effects leave you with a sense of curiosity and admiration.\nThis printmaking technique is actually a variation on woodcut, which itself is a relief printing technique characterized by the designer drawing an image onto the surface of a wood block, so that the print begins to part level with said surface as the non-printing parts are removed. With linocut, a basic sheet of linoleum is used as the relief surface.\nAs you can imagine, this specialized approach to design can create a host of visually striking and memorable images that will leave an impression on you.\nHere’s a deep dive into everything you need to know about linocut graphics.\n

<\/span>The History of Linocut<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>

\nLinoleum as a floor covering goes back to approximately 1860, but this printing technique for graphic design only arrived on the scene in the early 20th century. Linocut was initially explored by creatives and artists from the school of design called Die Brucke, which translates to “The Bridge.” This school of design came from German Expressionism, which was characterized by showcasing extreme emotion via high-level colors that were frequently not natural.\nBetween 1905 and 1913, this material that had been mainly used for wallpaper covering slowly but surely transitioned to its role as a medium for creating art. Interestingly, linoleum was traditionally used, thanks to it being a cheap alternative to more refined materials, as either a teaching product in schools or just by amateur artists looking to further hone their skills.\nGerman artists such as Gerd Arntz were fond of this material nonetheless, especially the opportunities in stark contrast that linoleum offered.\n\"\"\nIf we look to one artist who made linocut popular in the UK, we have to look at Claude Flight, a pioneer in the field who also produced woodcuts. Since his first experimentation with linocut in 1919, Flight became the infant technique’s most fervent promoter because of his philosophy. He looked at the affordability of linoleum as a way of bringing this graphic-design style to a broader audience—the masses, if you will. As such, it was the democratization of art and design that he was interested in.\nFlight was influenced heavily by other important design movements that were active at about the same time. Noteworthy among those were heavyweights like Futurism<\/a> and Cubism. In his work related to linocuts, Flight was fond of using techniques such as movement and speed, and he also delighted in using simple and bold forms, which made him an early proponent of minimalism<\/a>.\nIf you’re not yet convinced about Flight’s dedication to this printing technique and art form, try this on for size: over the course of his career, he managed to produce more than 64 unique linocuts along with nine books on the subject.\nThe famous Pablo Picasso also contributed to this design movement. From approximately 1958 to 1963, Picasso created some highly memorable compositions when he began to dabble in linocuts. Though linocuts were only a relatively small part of the works that he produced over the course of his career, they still contributed greatly to putting this printmaking technique on the map in a big way.\nWhat was so unique about Picasso experimenting with linoleum was that it wasn’t his forte, to say the least. Though he had created graphic designs before, primarily with lithography and etching, he had never before ventured into something like linocut. It was also interesting that Picasso was already 78 when he started to broaden his artistic horizons by working with linoleum for the first time.\nOne of Picasso’s more well-known linocuts was his reimagining of Portrait of a Young Girl<\/em> by Lucas Cranach the Elder. While his work was definitely memorable, he surprisingly found the linocut process to be labor-intensive because it needed the cutting and alignment of six, separate colored blocks on top of each other for precise printing.\n\"\"\nAfter this initial frustration and taking a break from linoleum for a couple of years, Picasso returned to this design movement because he came up with what he thought was an ingenious solution to this labor-intensive effort. Now called the reduction method, he went from printing on several, different blocks to using just one, big block. The block would be printed in the lightest shade of color, then additionally cut and printed further from the lightest to the darkest colors.\nWhile this may have saved him some time and therefore allowed him to circumvent the large effort required, his new method was more mentally taxing. Now, Picasso had to deal with pretty much visualizing how every, single alteration to the block would look without being able to see it in front of him. Needless to say, being able to imagine how such changes would affect the overall composition of the block took great, artistic genius.\nAnother great artist who contributed to linocuts was none other than the Frenchman, Henri Matisse. Matisse was renowned for working with a slew of printmaking techniques over the course of his career, thereby allowing him to smoothly move from one to the next, eventually leading to linocut.\nMatisse actually started experimenting with linoleum a full decade earlier than Picasso. Starting in the 1940s, Henri Matisse produced a collection of linocuts that were based on Greek Mythology’s legends, like those of Minos and Pasiphae. The result of this labor, which took him almost a year, was recognized as one of the greatest contributions to linocut printmaking within the 20th<\/sup> century.\nFor a look at how some of today’s most creative designers are applying linocut themes, see our large selection of linocut-inspired digital assets:

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<\/span>Linocut Graphics and Effects: The Technique Explained<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>

\nWhen we say linocut, we are indeed talking about linoleum, that old floor covering you’re used to seeing in your grandma’s house that’s made from materials like wood flour, mineral fillers, ground cork dust, pine rosin, and linoxyn, which is really solidified linseed oil. The thing with linoleum is that it’s a highly versatile material—which is why it’s used in this printing technique.\nBut before we even get to the linoleum, it’s important to plan the design on something as basic as a plain piece of paper. This is where designers will sketch out any patterns or compositions they want to test out for the actual linocut. Designers may even use design software like Adobe<\/a> Photoshop or Illustrator to get an idea of how aesthetic the finished design they have in mind might be.\nFrom here, designers have two options:\n<\/p>