Monoprinting Madness!

In my Monday mixed media class, we have been playing around making watercolour monoprints using Yupo paper as the printing plate. It makes a great plate as it needs no preparation at all -just paint away on it. The above image is my first print off my plate (I had a photo of the plate before printing, but I lost it!). I have not done anything yet to the print -this is the way it looked right after being pulled. See any possibilities?

To make the plate, I began by applying tube watercolour in blue and yellow (with an equal amount of gum arabic/glycerine solution -you don't want runny paint here) with a 4" brayer to the Yupo. I textured this in a variety of ways, adding paint with stamps and also removing colour with dampened lace or stamps and lifting with a dry kleenex, and then I brayered on some more colour, covering that new white space. Any time you want to remove paint to get back to white paper it is a breeze -you just lift it off with a wet brush. I applied some opaque paint on top of all that, again with a brayer, and lifted through some of the resulting layers.

When you make a plate, think of it like a sandwich -the stuff at the very top of the plate will print first, and then successive layers will print if you print a ghost. More about that in a minute...You have to remember that whatever is on the bottom of the Yupo will end up being on top in the final image (unless you have lots of layers as I did, then the middle might end up being on top!). You never really know what you will end up with!

This is the plate on the right and the above print on the left, so you can see how much paint is left on the plate after printing. I had several layers of paint and texturing on the plate, and it is cool to see the differences between the two images -really look and see the differences! The first print only took off the top layer, so the plate looks very different now than the print. So, I decided to print the plate again without adding any more paint to it. This is called a ghost print.


Here is the plate on the right and the ghost print on the left. You can see the value of the original print in the top left corner. Again, look at the difference between the two. The plate still looks pretty cool, so I played with that some more, but you'll have to wait for tomorrow's post to see it!

So now the question is -what to do with the two prints? Glad you asked! I love going back into these prints with watercolor and prismacolor pencil crayons. Haven't done this to these prints yet, but here is one that I did do:

"Endpapers for a Dream", mixed media, 18 x 10" (sold)

Monoprinting with watercolors is a fun and very creative way to make art. If you want to know more, just let me know and I will go into it in more detail.

Enjoy!