Linocut Printmaking: Greetings From The Buckeye Trail

Introduction

According to my AllTrails activity history, I started hiking on a regular basis in early-September 2018. Reflecting on this time period, it was when I’d decided to quit my comfortable (but depressing) desk job and go back to work full-time in a kitchen. That’s an entirely different story for a different place. The important and relative part about it, though, is that the decision freed me up to hike a lot more than I’d been able to, because my days would be open once I began working nights.

Up to that point, I’d become familiar with the overall opportunities to hike in Cuyahoga Valley National Park (CVNP). A little over a year before, I’d moved into a condo right on the edge of the park near the F.A. Seiberling Nature Realm. This location made it easy for me to hit pretty much any trail in the valley south of Route 480 for a hike before work. Over the past five-plus years, I would say that I’m now familiar with every trail system in the valley and have probably hiked nearly every one of them, at least once. It’s become my favorite method of exercise and I get out as often as possible.

The Buckeye Trail

Which brings us to this print celebrating the Buckeye Trail. According to the Buckeye Trail Association:

For nearly 1447 miles, the Buckeye Trail winds around Ohio, reaching into every corner of the state. From a beachhead on Lake Erie near Cleveland, to a hilltop overlooking the Ohio River in Cincinnati, a hiker can experience a little of all that Ohio has to offer.

While CVNP is a sort of collection of its own trails and features, along with parks in the Cleveland Metroparks and Summit Metro Parks systems, the Buckeye Trail itself runs through all of these. When I put together longer hikes that span multiple parks, it’s often the Buckeye Trail that connects them. It was on one of these stretches that inspired me to create this print.

The Box

One of my favorite hikes begins at the CVNP Boston Mill Visitor Center, heads up to Blue Hen Falls, at which point it takes the Buckeye Trail all the way to Jaite (at which point it continues on all the way to Cleveland). At around the 3 mile point of this hike, just after crossing Columbia Road, there’s a wooden box on a post on the left hand side of the trail. It’s divided into two sections, has a lid and a plexiglass face. It’s been empty every time I’ve passed it and appears to be in a state of disrepair. And, I’ve always wanted to leave something in it for the others who’ve passed it empty.

The Concept

Linocut printmaking has been my preferred method of producing greeting cards for the past three years or so. It was during my most recent hike on this trail in early-November of last year that it finally struck me that a greeting card would be a relative easy and fun thing to leave behind. And, if I stamped the envelope, the person wouldn’t even need to pay the cost of postage to send it to someone they knew.

The idea of a “Greetings From” concept was always there. It’s been used on everything from post cards to album covers over the years. My first idea was an image of a wooded trail down the middle of the card, but, after seeing the Buckeye Trail logo on the BTA website, I decided to use that as the basis of the final design.

Making The Print

After making about six cards, the process of creating a linocut print for one is pretty standard. It begins with creating the design on my computer using Photoshop, and, once it’s finished, reversing the image and printing it out to a light stock of paper. The design is then transferred to a linoleum block using carbon paper. Once the design is transferred, it must be inked onto the block using permanent marker to prevent it from being smudged-off during the cutting process.

As usual, what I think is a relatively simple and/or easy design, turned-out to be a bit more complicated than I thought it would be. The cursive titling for this print ended-up much smaller than I’d imagined on the block, and cutting-out all those curves and gaps was stressful. Even the wording in the silhouette of the state wasn’t easy because of how thin the letters were, along with their square caps.

Fortunately, my experiences with my Happy Birthday 2024 print taught me that I’d historically been cutting much more deeply than I needed to in order to create the relief needed for printing. Sticking with that approach of cutting only deep enough to remove the surface in places resulted in a test print that didn’t indicate any extra work was needed and I could proceed with printing the series.

Initial Series: Black on Brown Card Stock

The vision was always black ink on a brown card stock, and only to make a limited run of ten or so cards. During the printing process, a bit more ink was needed to transfer the print to the brown card stock and it got sort of gummed-up. This is probably because I still use a water-based ink (and have a lot of water-based ink to get through before I change to something else). So, the ten cards (plus one for wall and one to send my brother who I hike with on a regular basis) are finished, but I’m expecting to do a run in color in the spring or summer. Honestly, the linocut blocks are so difficult to produce that it seems a shame to make so few prints.

Conclusion

According to my plan, I dropped-off the packaged cards in the box on Sunday, February 18, 2024. Hopefully, those who take a card only take one and some of them actually mail them to a friend or family member. More to come!

View the Gallery entry for this print to view different variations.