It's time to get carving. And this is my favorite part of the process. But we also have to go over some safety because it's also the most dangerous part of the process. And I'm really not a fan of blood. And I don't want to see any of that right here or on you. So I want to go over a few techniques and tips to keep you safe in this process.

And it can sound really simple and obvious when I say it, but we always need the reminder. So stick with me as we go through these rules. To hold the linoleum carving tool, the best way to go about this is to put the butt of the tool into the center of the palm of your hand like so. And then you can wrap your fingers around the tool naturally. So you can see that my thumb, pointer finger and middle finger are all supporting almost to the neck right still on the red portion of the tool not up here. Supporting right there and these two fingers are just wrapped loosely around the end.

And then that way you can start to carve like so. And a few things are to always carve away from yourself never carve toward you always carve away because of this slips on your linoleum at all. You want it to slip away from every part of yourself from your hand from your stomach from your waist if you're standing up. So carve away, carve away, carve away carve away. One way to make sure that you're always carving away from yourself, is to put one hand your non dominant hand on one edge of your linoleum so that you're always carving away from that hand and your hand is holding the block steady. Now if you want to get over to a different part of your block, just turn it around.

Place your hand on that other part of the block that you've already potentially carved, putting pressure There's that it doesn't move, it doesn't wiggle so that you have stability as you carve away. And then you also want to carve at a 45 degree angle, you don't want to be coming in 90 degrees, you don't want to be too close to the surface here. You want to be coming at a 45 degree angle. And you can feel it kind of stick in the block at that point. So 45 degrees and you'll know when you hit the sweet spot of carving, because you'll be able to make fluid lines without any kind of hiccup. So if I'm going at a 45 degree angle starting to carve away a lot of this background is going to come in that 45 degree it's real smooth and carve away