Caroline gave us three demonstrations of monoprinting
Monoprinting is a spontaneous and quick way of working, and good for getting texture.
The first example was using an oil stick. She started by preparing a frame using an old cat food box made of cardboard, tracing paper and regular printing paper. She then glued the frame in place so it wouldn’t move when she rubbed the top layer onto the framed part.
She ripped out shapes to form mountains from a separate piece of paper and carefully placed this on the framed paper. You can draw this out if you prefer. Then she pulled the tracing paper , which has been covered with the oil stick, over the top. She then rubbed hard over the frame and once the tracing paper was removed it revealed the outline of the mountains . Then, turning the torn paper upside down, she placed it to form the reflections of the mountains. As some of the oil stick has already been removed the second rubbing will be lighter, which worked well. She then went on to add more details by drawing on the tracing paper and reapplying some more oil stick where needed.
Next she did another print using charcoal. Pastel paper is best for this as it traps more of the charcoal and stops it just moving around the paper.
She coated a sheet of pastel paper with charcoal then placed this charcoal side down on top of her regular printing paper. She did her drawing on the back of the coated paper and used rubbing to create the shadows. You can use hatching and crosshatching if you prefer.
For the final demo, she used acrylic paint, and a piece of glass ( from her fridge) and printing paper.
First she coated the glass, starting at the bottom with a mid blue going darker to black at the top to represent the night sky. She put the paint on very thickly making the strokes dynamic to show the energy released by the fireworks. She then folded the paper over the glass and pressed very hard down on the paper. Next she lifted the paper and, by flicking the paint, spattered several colours onto the glass. Again press down very hard with the printing paper. Finally she added some buildings to the bottom of the glass and pressed down on top with the paper. Resist the urge to paint directly onto your print!
