Speedball Professional Relief Ink

When just starting in lino carving I was trying to find affordable supplies. The price of this ink was very reasonable and it's a lot of ink! Just takes a little bit to do a series of prints. It's oil base so dry time is slower than water base. In the learning curve that is a plus because the ink doesn't dry up on the lino block while you're printing. I use it for mono (one color) prints. On some pieces, I come back with watercolor paints to add highlights. Take some time to clean up the inside of the lid and the lip around the canister to make use less messy. Good ink at a good value.

Lovely ink. It’s so nice to have an ink with a longer work time that still cleans up with water and soap.

Got worried by all the reviews saying it arrived leaking. It looks like they've taken steps to remedy this. It has some heavy duty tape wrapped around the lid and wasn't leaking.

The ink itself is great, but like other reviewers stated mine came dented and a dried layer of film on top. 4 days into drying and it was still not dry, even in a very dry climate. My dog, who was curious tested the prints out while I was at work, and we found smudges and prints everywhere. Thankfully, it does clean up easily with soap and water.

It works great! I am in a beginner printmaking class so it has done the job!

I wanted to write a good review, but the ink had leaked into my entire package and was a mess from the start. Not what I thought I'd get but, ill let you know how well it prints with the ink I have left Update: I wanted to update the stars. Though a pain I ended out with about half of my ink left. Its 2022 and its still working like a charm. A little dry but, you can fix that If you are picky. Thats 3 years people and Im not even at the bottom!

I've been working with Speedball block printing ink and wanted to try the Professional version. The consistency is better and achieves better printing results but ink takes a ridiculously long time to dry. I printed onto a thin blank MDF panel (which is more porous than I thought) and a panel painted with acrylics and this ink is still tacky to the touch almost 10 days later. I've had it in a sunny window in a dry studio and still not completely dry. Will need to anticipate the drying time prior to any future projects. This tin container that the ink comes in isn't the greatest. Two tins were crushed in shipment.

Great high quality ink. Is super black and the ink is nice and creamy. A great value for the price!

Sadly it was leaking when it arrived

The ink itself is fine (doesn't seem dry,) but I'll update this review as I use it. But holy damn, the other reviews were correct that Amazon just is incapable of shipping these without damaging the tin. Mine was dented in 3 places and wibble wobbles on the table (see vid,) which isn't great. I'll see if I can gently mallet-whack it back to a stable state. The ink was pretty chaotic inside as well, as it was shipped in a bag, not a box with stuffing so this was jangling around and upside down a lot I imagine.

Well, I'm used to using tubes of oil-based black ink, to do my lino-prints with, but I thought I would give this product a go. The ink that I regularly use comes out of the old-style tubes very thick, and sticky, which is good, and the rolling of the ink out on a glass plate is also very good and efficient, but this stuff (which was quite expensive) was hardly sticky at all, and I found that it was pretty horrible to use. After ten minutes of trying it, I threw the pot of it in the refuse bin! Good!... Back to the tubes!

Really loving working with this ink. I’ve been printing lino on kraft cardstock with it and the prints look great, and they dry fairly quickly too. I love that everything washes up easily too.

It is a pleasure to use. Its application is a breeze. One thing is that at shipping the tins get banged and you may have a leaking jar in env. which is unfortunate. Good luck!