A seagull in blue ink stamped on top of a watercolour wash suggestive of a cloudy sky

Watercolour linocut

A couple weeks ago I did a beginner’s linocut workshop at the Slice of Life Art Gallery in East Vancouver. The process was fun and simple: sketch something on tracing paper, transfer the graphite onto a rubber block, then carve out the relief. We stamped our designs on watercolour backgrounds we painted at the start of the workshop.

A pencil sketch of a seagull silhouette on a pink rubber block.
A relief carving of a seagull made from a rubber block. The carving has been used as a stamp and has blue ink on it. A pile of pink shavings is in the background.

The seagull stamp in progress.

I made two designs — a simple seagull on a sky-blue background, and a more experimental depiction of a fire hydrant.1 I’m quite pleased with how both turned out!

A black outline of a fire hydrant stamped on a watercolour background that evokes a red and yellow fire hydrant, a blue sky, and green grass.

  1. Eagle-eyed readers will notice that, although the watercolour gives the vibe of a fire hydrant, the colour scheme doesn’t exactly match that of anywhere in BC — all municipalities that have yellow-bodied hydrants with potentially red bonnets would also colour the side caps red. But that wouldn’t have come across in the medium.