Lino printing is one of the friendliest ways into printmaking. You carve a design into a soft sheet, roll on ink, lay paper over the top and rub the back with your hand. No press, no darkroom, no expensive kit. A kitchen table, a plastic sheet to protect it and an hour or two is genuinely enough to produce your first decent print.

The appeal is that everything shows. Every gouge mark, every stray nick, every slightly uneven patch of ink becomes part of the finished thing. Beginners often worry about mistakes; in lino, the "mistakes" are usually what makes a print look hand-made rather than machine-made.

The kit you actually need

Traditional grey lino is hessian-backed, firm and cheap, but it is hard work for a beginner. Softer vinyl sheets sold as soft-cut or Japanese vinyl carve like a firm eraser and hold detail surprisingly well. If you do use grey lino, warm it for a minute on a radiator or give it a quick pass with a hairdryer and it will cut beautifully.

Your starter kit looks like this:

• A lino cutter with interchangeable blades. A handle plus V-shaped and U-shaped gouges in a few sizes. Blades around 1 to 3 millimetres wide are your workhorses; a wide U gouge clears background areas quickly.
• A bench hook or non-slip mat. A bench hook is a simple wooden L that hooks over the table edge. It holds the lino still and makes the whole process far safer.
• A cutting mat underneath everything, and a piece of lino roughly A5 or A6 to start with. Small is good.
• Relief printing ink. Water-based ink dries in minutes and cleans up with soap and water. Oil-based ink gives a richer, denser black but needs white spirit to clean.
• A roller, ideally 60 to 75 millimetres wide, plus a smooth tile, glass sheet or acrylic plate to roll ink out on.
• Paper. Smooth cartridge paper of 120 to 220 gsm is ideal for hand printing. Japanese washi takes a print beautifully but is more expensive, so save it for when you are confident.
• A baren, wooden spoon or clean roller for burnishing, and a pile of rags or kitchen roll.

Transfer your design, and remember it mirrors

Keep your first design bold and simple: a single leaf, a mug, a fish, a few strong shapes. Thin lines are fragile and often break away during carving, and fine detail is hard to ink evenly by hand. Work at roughly the size you want the print to be.

Draw your design on paper, then either trace it onto the lino with a soft pencil or draw straight onto the surface with a permanent marker. Remember that the printed image is a mirror of the block, so any lettering or anything directional must be drawn in reverse. Mark the top edge of the block with an arrow so you do not lose track.

Carving: slow, shallow, away from your fingers

Safety here is simple and non-negotiable. Always push the blade away from your body, and keep the hand holding the lino behind the cutting edge. Rotate the lino rather than the tool when you turn a corner, and never carve towards the hand that is steadying the block.

Take light, shallow passes rather than trying to cut to full depth in one go. Cut on both sides of a line before removing the strip between them; the waste lifts out cleanly that way. Remember that whatever you carve away stays white, and whatever is left takes the ink. If a blade starts skidding or snagging, change it. Blunt tools cause more injuries than sharp ones because they need force.

Inking up: thin and even wins

Squeeze a little ink onto your plate and roll it out in both directions until the roller is evenly coated and the ink makes a soft, tacky sound as it moves. That sound, a faint hiss, is your signal that the ink is the right consistency.

Roll onto the block in several directions, not just one, so the ink settles into the surface rather than sitting on top of it. Less ink is almost always better than more. Too much fills the carved hollows and your white areas disappear. If you want a second colour, either print it as a separate block or carve away more of the same block after your first run.

Printing by hand without a press

Lay your paper over the inked block and hold it still with one hand, or tape the corners down. Then burnish the back with your baren, spoon or a clean roller, working in small circles from the centre outwards, pressing firmly but evenly across the whole block.

Peel the paper away slowly from one corner so you can watch the print appear. If something has gone wrong, it is nearly always one of these:

• Patchy, faint print: not enough pressure, or the paper is too thick and textured for hand printing.
• Ink in the carved areas: too much ink on the block, or the hollows were not cut deep enough.
• Blurry, smudged edges: the paper shifted while you were burnishing. Hold it down firmly.
• Paper stuck to the block: far too much ink, or you left it sitting for a while before peeling.

Cleaning up and keeping your kit usable

Clean as you go. Wipe the block and roller with a rag first to lift the bulk of the ink, then wash water-based ink off with warm soapy water. Oil-based ink needs white spirit or a dedicated press cleaner, followed by a soapy wash to remove the residue. Dry the roller standing on its handle end so the rubber does not flatten.

Store your carved blocks flat, print side up, separated by sheets of greaseproof paper so they do not stick together. Blades last much longer if you wipe them dry and keep them away from damp. And keep every print, even the wobbly ones: a run of ten side by side shows you exactly what changed, which is how most people learn this craft.