Mono printing heaven… ?

 

I spent a disproportionate amount of time stressing last week about the prospect of covering a mono printing workshop at the Art Gallery.

I’d set the class up months ago for a local artist, but as the weeks rolled by, through no fault of her own, it transpired that she wouldn’t be available to teach.

I thought ah well, mono printing with acrylics…..I usually do this with printing inks…transfer method…Tracy Emin style…it shan’t be very different, I’ll cover no probs.

I went over to Sudeshnas so she could talk me through the process…some of her lovely playful prints are above. She’s a regular on the Open Studios circuit and has a very particular printing style. Undeterred, I collected the acrylic sheets that were to act as our plates, extra paint & paper from Fulford….all good.

I started printing on the Monday. Loved the process of painting on plastic with acrylic…wonderful. Sliding your brush across the glass like surface is marvellous, so tactile & effortless.  The simple act of laying your paper on top of the paint, smoothing it down, peeling it back to reveal marks that are somehow alien is exciting…but even though the change in mark making is a “happy” change… after a while a sense of disappointment kicks in. I want my marks to look like they did on the acrylic sheet, when I painted them…I thought a certain set of marks would be bigger, finer, more random….some sections look clumsy on the paper, it looked looser & more expressive on the plate.

One of Carla Bosch’s colourful landscapes…

…a mono print copy.

For a self confessed control freak, this process proved a little tricky. It wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t have opted to teach it a few days in, but teaching it to a group of people who were expecting a particular approach was something slightly scary.

I printed throughout Tuesday, introduced it to my afternoon class on Wednesday, continued Thursday evening and on Friday found myself still printing whilst Graham Norton was on… You could say I became a little obsessed!

Saturday proved to be a lovely day. Intense, purposeful, but very creative. Blue apples – below, by the highly creative Amy Demartine. Zosia Olenska’s wonderful London café scene & Sam Pearson’s colourful landscape (Weds afternoon group) . Hope my learners are keen…I’ll be doing this more often …

 

 

Lastly, was anyone else blown away by the theme tune to Unforgiven…crime drama that just finished on Thursday nights…? Really beautiful.