Your first weekend of linocut printmaking
Linocut is one of those crafts where you can produce a real, satisfying print on your very first afternoon. Here's how to go from blank block to inked image in a weekend — and what to expect when the gouge starts moving.
By The JustBeginning Editors · Published May 24, 2026
Linocut printmaking is fast to learn and slow to master — which makes it a genuinely good way to spend a weekend. Within a few hours of holding a gouge for the first time, you’ll have a printed image on paper. It won’t be perfect. It will be yours, in a way that digital art and photography can’t replicate: a physical mark, repeated as many times as you want, made by your hand carving away a material.
Here’s what your first weekend actually looks like.
Before you touch the block
You need four things: a rubber carving block, a gouge set, a brayer, and a tube of black water-based block printing ink. That’s it. You can print on regular copy paper to start and upgrade later.
Set up on a table with good light. A non-slip surface helps — a damp cloth or a piece of rubber shelf liner under your block will keep it from sliding while you carve. The entire setup takes five minutes.
One thing to sort out before you pick up the gouge: everything prints in reverse. Text reads backwards, a bird facing left in your carving will face right on the print, your dominant hand will be on the wrong side. This is the thing that surprises beginners most. For your first design, pick something that isn’t directional — a leaf, a geometric shape, a simple bold symbol — and you won’t have to think about it.
Designing your first image
Simple is not a compromise. It’s the right choice. The most satisfying first prints are bold, graphic, and high-contrast — a single leaf, a thick-lined bird in profile, a short word in a blocky font. Fine details are achievable but technically demanding; you want to learn how the tool behaves before you ask it to do precise work.
Draw your design on paper at the same size you want to print it. Then transfer it to the block using the pencil-rub method: flip the paper face-down onto the block surface, and scribble hard over the back of the drawing with a soft pencil or ballpoint pen. The graphite transfers to the block. Trace any faint lines with a pen before you start carving.
A rule that sounds obvious but trips up beginners: you’re carving away what you don’t want to print. The uncarved surface holds the ink and makes marks on paper. The carved grooves stay white. If you want a black bird on white paper, you carve around the bird’s outline, removing everything that isn’t bird.
Carving — how the tool actually works
Hold the gouge the way you’d hold a pen — lightly, near the tip, with your index finger on top for control. Push forward and slightly downward at an angle. The tool should move through soft rubber with light, controlled pressure. If you’re forcing it, either the gouge is dull or you’re gripping too hard.
A few things worth knowing in your first session:
Start with the V-gouge. The V-shaped nib makes clean, controlled lines and is the most intuitive for outlining shapes. The wider U-gouge is for clearing large background areas — it removes material fast but is harder to control for detail work.
Carve away from yourself. Turn the block, not the tool. If you need to cut in a different direction, rotate the block so the cut goes away from your body. This is how you avoid slipping.
Test-print early and often. After you’ve carved your outline, press the block flat against a piece of paper to see what you have so far. Ink it lightly with your brayer, press on paper, lift. This reveals what your carved areas look like printed before you’ve gone too far. You can always carve more; you can’t uncarve.
Inking and printing
Squeeze a small line of ink — about two inches — onto your inking slab (a ceramic tile, a piece of glass, a smooth plastic cutting board). Roll the brayer through it in a few strokes until the roller is evenly coated. You want the ink layer thin and consistent: the brayer should make a slight hissing sound as you roll it, not a wet slapping sound. Too much ink fills in the carved grooves and muddies your print.
Roll the inked brayer across your block using even, overlapping passes. Cover the whole surface. The block should look fully coated but not thick or wet-looking.
Lay your paper over the inked block. Press firmly and evenly with the flat of your hand, working from the center outward. Burnish the back with the bowl of a spoon — circular pressure, covering every part of the image. Then lift the paper from one corner, peeling it back slowly.
Your first print. It will have some missed spots, some areas where the ink was uneven. That’s expected and normal. Notice where the coverage was light (not enough pressure, or brayer too dry) and where the grooves filled in (too much ink, or the design was too fine for this pass). Adjust and print again.
What goes wrong, and why it’s fine
Every beginner’s first block produces the same set of surprises. None of them are failures:
White specks where you wanted solid black. Usually means the brayer was too dry, the paper was slightly thick, or your burnishing pressure was uneven. Add a touch more ink and press harder in the patchy areas.
Ink filling in the grooves. You used too much ink, or the carved channels are too thin for the ink thickness. Roll a thinner ink layer next time, or widen the carved area.
The design is backwards. You forgot to reverse it during transfer. This will happen to everyone at least once. Cut a fresh block.
Rough, torn edges on carved lines. Your gouge is dull, or you’re pushing rather than cutting. Replacing a Speedball nib costs about a dollar.
The image looks nothing like your drawing. Welcome to seeing negative space for the first time. It clicks with a second design; your eye recalibrates.
Your second print is better than your first
The fastest improvement in linocut comes from carving a second block immediately after your first. You already know how the tool feels, you know where you pushed too hard and where you didn’t carve far enough, and you have an instinct for what the finished print will look like that you didn’t have when you started.
Most printmakers get better by working through blocks, not by studying technique. Make ten prints from your first block. Make a second design. Notice what changes between the two.
When you’re ready to move past single-color black prints, the natural next step is a two-color design: carve a second block for the second color, print one on top of the other with careful alignment. That’s reduction printing at its simplest, and it’s where linocut goes from craft to art.
Ready to buy your first block and gouge set? See the linocut printmaking gear guide for the four things worth buying first — and the bench hooks and glass slabs you can skip entirely.