I drew my design freehand directly on to tracing paper. You could copy this, draw your own or use a photograph to work from. If you use someone else’s photo, please ask their permission and/or pay any relevant fee first. Turn over the tracing paper, place it on the lino and draw over the lines to transfer the image to the lino. This gives the image in reverse so it will print the same way as the picture you want to end up with.

Next, I inked over the pencil lines with an India ink pen, allowed it to dry then repeated the inking. I made a couple of minor changes to my drawing at this stage, putting the trees on a slope and changing the direction of the shadows for balance. Double inking may seem overkill, but the lino will be cleaned off after each colour – your initial inking needs to withstand this. Avoid using a spirit-based marker pen – you may get bleed through even after repeated washing off. Now wash off the excess ink and the lino is ready for cutting.

My first cutting is to allow the white of the paper to show. I marked with a dot the larger areas of ‘snow’ to cut away and I cut the white on the trees freehand.

For the first colour I mixed a light warm grey using white, sepia and black. I use a paper offcut to test the colour before inking the lino. Lightly ink the roller and roll onto your lino – you want a thin, even coverage. Before printing, look for ‘chatter’ on the cut areas of lino – this is where unwanted ink is picked up inadvertently. If there is a lot, cut away more lino to smooth the ridges. If there is only a little, clean it off with a damp cloth or cotton bud. Get into the habit of doing this every time before printing; it will save you losing prints. Put your lino onto the registration board and print off the first colour.

Your first colour should look something like this.

Second cutting is next. You want to cut away all areas of lino that are to remain grey on the print. I cut mine freehand by eye, but, if you don’t feel confident doing this, use the ink pen to mark the areas you want to remain dark and cut away the rest of the lino on the trees. Cutting underway (see left) - you can see the difference here between the first and second cutting. I’ve used tiny horizontal cuts to represent the bands of bark – it’s time consuming but worth it. Second cutting is now complete and ready to ink (see below).

For the second colour pass I inked the shadows area only, using a slightly graded colour. I mixed a light blue using white, cyan and a touch each of magenta and black, spread the colour over the inking sheet and lightened it with white at one side. By pulling colour down with the roller, you get a mixed-colour effect – print makers call this a rainbow roll. Ink the lino with the darker colour nearer the top and the lighter one at the bottom. You can roller only in one direction so look for chatter on the lino and clean off unwanted ink. Here the lino is inked ready to print.

And here it is printed.

The third cutting is to remove the shadows from the smaller trees near the back. I marked the lino with cuts to make and started cutting before realising a couple of the marks were in the wrong direction (oops!). They were already cut so each time I printed the next colour I used a small brush to dab in a little colour on the tiny missing areas of the print.

Use the same colours as last time just darkened a tad, and roller and print the remaining shadow areas. Here you see the shadow area now finished.

Fourth cutting is to remove the lino where the shadows are, and next ink the sky colour. I mixed a light blue using white, cyan and magenta. Here the shadows were cut away from the lino and the sky inked. I wanted really good coverage for the sky so lightly inked and printed each print twice – it didn’t take much longer and gave a far better result than one heavy coat of ink.

Final cutting is to remove the lino where the sky is. You’re probably eager to finish now, but don’t rush this – you don’t want to ruin all your hard work by axing a tree trunk or branch with a slip of the cutter!

Now add the final colour – the dark parts on the trees. You could use black for this, although I used a richer colour of purple mixed from cyan, sepia, magenta and white.

And now your print is finished! I hope you enjoyed making it and are pleased with the result. Below are some of the details from my print.

You can see more of my work and work-in-progress pictures on my website www.artfinder.com/margaret-mallows and also on Instagram @margaret.mallows where I regularly post updates of new work underway. I also post new work on the gallery here on PaintersOnline.

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