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when the mind is in an open, creative state, organically growing ideas, which tend to develop life of their own …  From the monochromatic print, the idea of having more colours was naturally born. This also gave me an opportunity to improve the ocular smoothness on both the faces of the Analyst and The Presenter. One would expect the Presenter would be more aesthetically pleasing. With that in mind, three more blocks were carved, to allow three layers of colour-blocks and one remaining key block. The key block enhances the faces, and I wanted more colours to expound on the monochromatic theme. In short: more colours, please. Life is too darned short without colours, amiright? A small reminder here that the essence of a relief print lino cut is three things: #1 the lino you cut away leaves a negative space (blank), #2 the lino you leave uncarved, gets the ink (color), and # 3 your lino block will print a mirror image of the carving. Here’s the thing that is the ultimate pull-factor for me: printmaking, be it using lino blocks or stamps or intaglio (engraving, etching etc.), allows me to create the print itself multiple times, and each print remains as an original. Each creates its own variations of image transfer to paper.  That was my paraphrasing of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers* statement in their explanation of What is an ‘original print’? : “With original prints, the original artwork IS THE PRINT ITSELF. The image may have been created in a variety of ways, by being etched into a plate, or drawn onto a lithographic stone, or engraved out of a block of wood for example. The finished work is only created by inking up and taking an impression from this plate, stone or block. The work does not exist in any other form. There may be a small number of this same impression produced, always in a limited edition, which is denoted by the number often written on the front of the work showing what number in the edition that impression is, with the full number of the edition produced underneath this top number.” -Copyright © 2022 The Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers *(https://www.re-printmakers.com/printmaking-explained/original-prints/)  Back to the TATP multiple block print. In addition of the initial monochrome block, I have created three others - all designed to be almost-identical. All carved manually, perhaps painstakingly, to align with each other. The idea is to allow any two blocks to align and be printable on their own; with the third block, whilst adding more colours and tonal layer, is not a necessity to make the print complete. That is to say, it adds, not take away from the whole picture. It may sound like over-engineering, but all it takes is a little inspiration and a small amount of planning. To start with, the monochrome remains the key block; The block which pulls all the others together, that is to say, all other blocks provide colours and tones. I use this as primary template, where I print onto a tracing paper/vellum/transparent paper. The dimensions for this allows me to swiftly transfer the design onto another block for necessary measurements and alignments for registering the blocks onto the printed paper. Three more blocks are carved after carefully sizing the designs and repeat printing onto the blocks to ensure alignment. The completed trio blocks of multicolour lino is shown in on the previous page. Colors chosen are yellows, whites, purples, ultramarine.  3-blocks of yellows, purples, ultramarines: To put into practice the two-blocks prints, at the time of writing, I have just freshly stepped out of the OmegaPrintmakers studio, printing the two-blocks version of TATP, in Red & Blue hand-mixed inks. The outcome print above . is exclusively shown here first, and has not been shown widely outside the MayApple magazine: and then Red & Blue: a two-blocks print. As of end of April 2022, is one-of-a-kind original “print. The only edition! Given that a little planning ahead of printing allows the alignment and therefore the flexibility of a set of multi block lino to print well with two - or three - blocks (or more besides), allows a degree of freedom that is not available in traditional painting. The sense of being enabled to experiment with various colours and producing an original print every time is in itself empowering for me. I hope you have enjoyed this written series of my lino printing adventures. Along the way, I hope it has sparked an interest where you may wish to practice handmade traditional printing process. My current project is creating linoprint tutorial videos for the veterans of the Veterans Outreach Support (VOS) charity in Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK. The videos will aid the veterans to maintain focus and engagement with creativity and allowing those isolated and remote to continue being creatively engaged. To raise funds, I am currently selling the monochrome TATP on SouthSeaEyes ko-fi page on https://ko-fi.com/southseaeyes . Keep creating! I am Nusye McComish of @southseaeyes (instagram) saying Cheerio. Cheerio! A huge thanks to Nusye for being a guest writer! We’ve really enjoyed her sharing her process with us. She has kindly donated a print as a prize for our Matsuri contest! So get writing!
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