Printmaking with Japanese Vinyl
This video blog reviews Japanese Vinyl for relief printmaking, and demonstrates drawing on, carving, and transferring printmaking ink to paper using the product. This video is perfect for beginners to linocut and relief printmaking or those looking for alternatives to lino. The video forms part of a series exploring different printmaking surfaces for lino and other relief prints, and I will share future reviews and art projects for each of these surfaces using my trusty Pfeil tools and a range of different printmaking inks.
Japanese Vinyl is very versatile, it has a smooth surface which takes a variety of pen inks and pencils although some can be difficult to see on the surface due to the dark colour of the vinyl when carving, or can smudge, so I recommend a permanent water proof pencil to sketch your design.
The five pencils and pens demonstrated in the video blog include the following, although you may want to experiment with your own similar alternatives:
Normal HB pencil
Staedtler Lumocolour permanent pencil (waterproof)
Pilot Permanent Ink (marker for projector)
Faber Castell PITT artist pen (waterproof indian ink)
Paper Mate pen (standard biro ink)
Japanese Vinyl is two sided, green on one, blue on the other, but you can carve into both. It is also black under the top surface which is visually very helpful when creating your design. I have personally found it perfect for cutting away small delicate details as it is very flexible. As it is so smooth and easy to carve I have also found there is less pressure on my hands and wrists, but I would recommend that you use sharp tools to ensure you get clean lines when carving your design too.
I have used Japanese Vinyl for a variety of different projects and with different inks. I was especially pleased how well it works with water-based inks which I had previously struggled with on other printmaking surfaces. In my personal experience the vinyl accepts the ink and transfers to a range of different papers perfectly, with my preferred paper being 300gsm archival standard cotton. I have also used it with the Caligo Safewash inks and the Cranfield Traditional Oil inks, all with good results.
Despite my initial misgivings about carving a small text stamp from this material, I was able to carve small letters without problems, and stamping with ink onto paper using this surface can work, although I would recommend backing it onto something more sturdy like wood, or using a soft carve stamping block, as this was a bit too impractical for me due to the thinness of the vinyl.
I hope this has been helpful, thank you for reading and watching my video blog below. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel for future video blog posts and to leave any questions in the comments section, or follow my blog on this website.