Manchester-based freelance artist Dan Howden is specialized in the art of linocut (“It’s all lino,” reads his Instagram caption). Having studied Visual Communication at both BA and MA level in Liverpool and Manchester respectively has helped him establish his layer-orientated approach to printmaking.
“Using a layer-heavy approach I’ve been practicing for years now, I produce detailed prints, imagery and sometimes animation from linocut,” he further explained in an interview with Lecture in Progress. According to him, the high volume of registrations within his work gives it a painterly quality. “I doubled down on it at university and since then it’s snowballed into becoming my entire practice, which if I think about for too long, can be a little disconcerting,” he admits.
While most of his earlier work is scenery-based, his later linocuts include a few figures here and there. “I like including juxtaposition within my work – a series of Portacabins at the site of the Parthenon in Athens, a group of cynical mannequins in a toy town department store,” he explains. “I enjoy taking nice, pleasant things and adding a little reality. Halloween, for instance, inspires me all year round. It’s primarily a holiday for children, but it’s dealing with some pretty dark subject matter and I love that combination.”
His toolbox includes first and foremost his Mac, as well as a lightbox and a scanner. And when it comes to the creative process itself, Howden relies on his traditional lino tools: two glass chopping boards, some Speedball rollers, the cheapest water-soluble inks (they dry really fast) and some Amazon–found Linoleum.
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