Vanessa begins with a series of sketches. The sketching and designing can take many hours (or days or weeks!). Once complete, the sketch is transferred to the linoleum block and the carving begins. Vanessa enjoys the challenge of thinking through which lines will be positive space and which ones will be the negative space that will be carved away. She likes the physicality of carving into the linoleum to create the mirror image of the finished work. Once carved, ink is rolled over the linoleum, and acid free paper laid over it. The image is then transferred to paper either by hand using a baren or a press is used.

Vanessa does small runs of 10 to 25 prints, which means the inking and transferring process is repeated 10 or 25 times for each impression in the edition. Once the ink is dry she hand-colours each print with a combination of prismacolor pencils and Beam watercolour paints. In this way, each print is a unique work of art as the ink transfer varies between prints as does the hand-colouring.

Creation of Beyond the trees there was the sea 6x8” hand-coloured linocut, edition of 15

Creating a Linocut: