Upgrading from the basics
I was cleaning out my studio recently and came across some old stuff- red Speedball handles, water based ink, tortilla presses, etc. As I was getting ready to donate them to a local community art center, I was thinking to myself, “if I could have started with tools and supplies one notch up from the crappy entry level stuff, what would I get?”
The most obvious upgrade is ink. An oil based ink is where it’s at. There’s a few safe-wash brands, meaning it doesn’t require harsh and/or flammable solvents to remove from your matrix or tools. I use Cranfield’s Caligo, and they have a great array of colors. There’s also Speedball Professional and Charbonnel Aqua Wash. The benefit to oil inks is they don’t dry up on your palette nearly as fast, and the texture is much more pleasing.
Battleship gray linoleum would be my next pick for what to upgrade next. Unlike traditional oil inks, Caligo can be used on Speedy-Cut or Speedy-Carve blocks, but those blocks still lack in producing detail. While actual linoleum is much harder to carve, there’s a few ways to mitigate the difficulty. Heating it with a warming pad, using a hair dryer, and keeping your tools very sharp trivialize most of its inherent stiffness.
The last major upgrade I have in mind is the aforementioned tools. The sky is the limit here, what with expensive hand made Japanese mokuhanga steel commanding premium prices. However the most bang for your buck is the 5 piece Powergrip set. In contrast to Essdee style multi-blade cutters, Powergrips arrive sharp, they don’t blunt when bonking around in their case, and the can be sharpened when they do lose their edge.
To sum it all up:
I think I would have cleared growing pains in printmaking a lot earlier with these.