Making Friday: Sat 19 Feb

No Making Friday for me last week, as Pearl’s away and I”m pretty frantic trying to do everything myself.  But it all came to a wonderful full stop on Saturday, when Paul kindly took over my stand at the Biscuit Mill maket and I went off to do a monotype workshop at Warren Editions.

When I signed up, I had no idea what a monotype was, but can now quote from my notes and tell you that:

A monotype is commonly referred to as the ‘painterly print’… the outcome of a printmaking process whereby an image is created on a surface… from which it will be transferred onto another surface.

So, what we did with the oil monotypes was use oil paints, rollers, brushes, earbuds etc to make marks onto a piece of prepared PVC that then got rolled through the press onto wet paper, thereby transferring the painted marks, and making a reversed image of the marks made.

Those pink handled Speedball rollers and a Rothko documentary I watched during the week collided as I selected colours for my first experimental print, and although quite uncharacteristic for me (pink and acid yellow?) I really loved rolling and applying these colours to my PVC.

Here Warren Editions master printer Zhane Warren and her studio manager (and workshop facilitator) Sara-Aimee Verity point out successes and problems with our first monotype attempts.

I then decided to do a quick paper cutout and see how this would work as a mask in a second print, hoping to get a nice contrast between the layered colours rolled onto the PVC and the crisp outlines of the papercut.

Didn’t turn out badly at all! And next Saturday we return for a second workshop, this time doing watercolour monotypes. I canNOT wait!