Ty-Gher

Ty-Gher is a linoleum block print that I made for a Printmaking class. We were asked to make a lino print, where we could choose the design that we wanted to depict and execute. There were different size blocks to choose from. I choose an 8.5 x 11-inch block. My goal for this project was to work on a larger scale than I have before when it came to lino printing. Due to my love of portrait work, and animals, I began to look through my photos again and found an image of myself holding one of my cats, Ty-Gher from the last time I was home. I began to make some sketches and came to the idea that I wanted the cat to be really detailed but have the person almost cartoon like- with a very simple face, and block-y hair strands. After looking through Pinterest for more block printing inspirations, I saw a lot of stamp designs that have the border of a postage stamp. I liked that a lot and decided to incorporate it into my sketch. There was some blank space that I didn’t like and so I first began by writing the word GATO vertically in the space. After some more tweaking, I decided to change it and placed some stars in the space instead. I liked that there were no more letter forms, and I like stars.