Adventures in Printmaking: Monotype

As I mentioned before, I've started a printmaking class recently, and I am in love. We started with additive monoprinting, which is basically copying or creating a painting on a piece of plexiglass, and then transferring it onto paper. With a monoprint, you generally get a single print (with perhaps a follow-up or "ghost print"), but it's not an endless supply, like those you could make with, say, a lino block or a silkscreen technique. For example, I started with a pretty simple picture I love from the Sound of Music:



Just a dab of blue paint in the dark spots (and an ever-changing handle on ideas of light and dark) and voila! Monoprint!

There are also subtractive methods of monoprinting, in which you roll up the piece of plexiglass, and then subtract ink before printing it. You can subtract ink by wiping it away with Q-tips, pieces of cardboard, cotton balls, or by placing something solid over the plate -- for example, grass. Behold:



Nice, eh?

By adding a step, you can get different gradations of hue. Here's a subtractive monoprint I did with yarn:

For this one, I rolled up the plexi with brown ink, added yarn lying over the plate, printed one piece with the yarn on, then took the yarn off and printed this second one. The places where the yarn HAD been had more ink, hence the darker squiggles. The places the yarn HADN'T been had already been printed once, and so some of the ink was gone, hence the lighter shade. Cool, huh?

I think that's the beauty of printmaking, is that you can add processes together, and get endlessly complex pieces. Along with this, however, comes the fine art of knowing when to stop. It's easy to take one extra step and end up with something that's overdone. Take this conglomerate, for example:It's got a certain charm, a kind of printmaker's camouflage. But before that final layer of gold, it had a totally different look, a much more clear and articulate style. There was more white, and the white really pulled together and separated simultaneously the areas of color. I learned my lesson here. Stop when I like something, and don't overdo it.

Next time: subtractive red, yellow, blue monoprints. Get psyched!

The Whole Wide Room