Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Making the Most of a Bad Day : Monoprints

Like millions of Americans, today I am reeling from the results of our presidential election. As a coping mechanism, I thought the best thing to do was to get into the studio and make myself do stuff.

So I spent the day making monoprints to use in collage.


First I made things to make the prints from. I made pattern rollers by cutting Scotch mounting tape into small pieces and sticking them onto rubber brayers. I also cut grooves into a rubber brayer so that it would create a pattern when rolled.

I took polystyrene pieces saved from chicken packaging and drew patterns into them with a pencil or end of a brush. I peeled the paper off one side of pieces of foam core and drew into that surface. I wrapped rubber bands around blocks of wood.


I used fabric screen printing ink, which is water soluble and non-toxic, to print, rolling it on with a brayer from a palette. I printed on deli paper, wax paper, butcher paper and cleaned and flattened tea bag material.


The reason for the fabric ink - slower to dry than acrylic paint, but water-based as opposed to oil-based, so easlier clean-up. And a note about the deli paper - this was a material introduced to me for making monoprints in the workshop I took from Nancy Barch. I was having trouble finding it and ended up ordering it from a company called ULINE when I ordered a bunch of other stuff I needed from them. I thought I was ordering 1 box of 1000 sheets and ended up with 10 boxes of 1000 sheets, so if you want some deli paper, let me know. I ordered the butcher paper from ULINE, too, because I thought it would be an interesting printing material, so I also have a enough of that to last me a lifetime. I'll find out how it reacts to the matte medium when I use it in collage. I hope it gets somewhat translucent.

No comments: