Christmas Period

I finally got down to some more printing over the extended break and have managed about two hours a day on about seven occasions with gaps in between. The problem is also that I have to work in a shed in the garden which has no electricity so I either have to be on holiday or do it at the weekend. Learning a new skill is always frustrating to start with and progress seems slow.

I started with mark making experiments applying the paint to the plate with a variety of objects and varying the consistency with medium. I am working almost exclusively in A3 as I don't want to feel cramped and frankly I think anything less than A4 at this stage just wouldn't work. I am begining to gain some understanding of the ways you can create a textured effect with monoprints.

I am also learning that the white area where there is no paint is as expressive as the area with paint and to plan for these negative shapes and negative textural qualities.

From exercises I moved on to still lifes of a wooden bowl, an orange and an aluminium jug and I did about fifteen or more of these just to explore the feel of the medium more and to grasp how to convey an image.

I find that working with the limitations of monoprint and playing to it's strengths as a medium is the best way to get results. It doesn't work if you impose on it, the accidents are often the best bits and recreating them so that they are not accidents is probably the key!

I experimented with templates drawn in pencil and placed under the plate as a guide and to help register subsequent applications of paint and this was a useful technique. I also did some drawings in indian ink with a stick from a template and then using the same template monprinted over the top. I could of course have just drawn over the monoprint but this didn't occur to me and anyway I liked the effect I got from the accidental mis registration.

I did several versions of these 'line and wash' images trying to develop low tonal key colour schemes that worked sensitively with each other. I made colour notes in my note book for later use.

Tone is a consideration and I have mainly kept to low tonal keys of broken textural nature with white paper breaking through. I probably need to try some of these but with an over print of solid darker paint in some areas. To be frank I am getting bored with oranges, jugs and bowls so I'm going to move on to a different subject.

I saw a birthday card done in watercolour of a cat trying to get a fish out of a pond. It was one cat shaped splodge for the cat with another slightly violet splodge for the shadow and white bits of paper left to denote the cat's white paws and face. I've done some sketches, photos and watercolours of my own cat with a view to doing something similar as a monoprint. I'll probably do quite a lot of them until I get it right.

Hopefully my next post will include some pics of this work.