Carved in wood

This IIT Bombay alumnus is making Linocut art all the rage

Samidha Gunjal, who runs Studio Dhamisa, is an illustrator, animator and comic artist mainly working on children’s books and comics for adults. Gunjal’s linocut work, an art that she only explored as a new hobby to break the monotony of digital drawing mediums, especially stands out. “I find linocut more challenging, engaging, calming and liberating. I have to approach and plan each concept differently to achieve the desired outcome. It also needs a higher level of concentration with almost no room for mistakes. It is calming as it is a skill-based tactile medium that never fails to surprise me with the outcome,” she explains.

Samidha Gunjal

Linocut is a printmaking technique, that uses a piece of wooden block, which then gets carved by a sharp knife to make a print that can be used to create a stamp-like impression on fabric or paper. She uses these blocks to create T-shirts, comic books and bags. Carving a single block can take up to a week depending on the complexity of the design and hence, Gunjal takes up to 20 days to deliver a T-shirt order. 

She also conducts online workshops over the weekends to introduce her favourite art technique to others. Time and charges for commissioned work completely depend on the complexity and scope of the work. Generally caving linocut blocks take anything from a few hours to weeks depending on the size of the block and the detailing on it. For fabric printing, it takes around 15-20 days to handprint a T-shirt and cure the inks. The T-shirts are priced at Rs 1,200 and above. 

@gdhamisa, Instagram

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