I decided to cut the smaller lino block and get a little practice before I tried the more complex block. Once I found the specific tools I liked, it went pretty quickly. I also found an interesting painting tutorial for doing lots of layers so I thought I’d give it a try.

Here is the design drawn on the block.

 Then I started carving. No injuries today!

 I tried printing, carved a little more off the background and printed again.

 Then I realized that I will have to make a corner block if I am going to do a full page design with these. Will have to figure that one out.

 Here is the painting technique I started. First I applied gesso and put some texture in to it. Let that dry, add a variety of paint colors with liquid acrylic paints. Then let those dry. Then add gel medium. Let that dry. There’s a lot of drying going on here.

 This is the second page. These are part of my journal so I decided I would do a two page spread.

 Then I put gesso on some leaves and printed them on to the pages.

 You overlap the leaves and put them wherever you want.

 Once the gesso is dry, then you go in with paint and add darkness around the edges of some of the leaves. Also, I added some paint into some of the leaves. Kind of gives the effect of skeleton leaves.

I was a bit limited on the leaves I had available in the middle of winter. Mostly I used dried leaves and houseplants. Once I finished the bottom layer of leaves, I painted it all over with gel medium again. It’s drying again and later I will add more layers. You just keep adding more layers until you’re happy with the result. I’ll show you more as I progress.