There is tons of advice out there for how to transfer an image onto lino for carving and most of it doesn’t work when you need it to. There are unaccounted for variables that make one process work for person A but fail for person B. Maybe humidity? Slight differences in the printer? Who knows. Here’s one more technique that you can try after you’ve tried everything else: rubbing the back of the print with alcohol. I got the idea after I saw someone mention that they use “colorless blender,” which I took to mean the marker that you use to blend together marks from other markers. Blending markers like Copic are alcohol-based, so I figured I could try the same technique with cheaper rubbing alcohol.

It’s faint, but it worked! I used a Brother toner printer which has been printing kind of cruddy lately; no matter. I clipped the print to the lino to hold it in place. I used a paper towel to saturate the back with rubbing alcohol, then I laid wax paper on top to protect it and rubbed it down into the lino with a barren. (On his channel, DAS Bookbinding refers often to “rubbing paper,” meaning butcher paper or parchment paper that can be used to protect a more delicate wet paper or fabric from wrinkling or getting dirty when you are rubbing out the air bubbles.)

Next I will experiment with different colored coatings on the lino to see if a different surface might help the image transfer better.