Making Friday: Sat 26 Feb

Another Friday rolled around with no Making included, apart from the nice straight line I helped make at the tax office. However, as Friday was swiftly followed by the second of the Saturday morning monotype workshops I’d signed up for at Warren Editions , all was not lost.

This week we were doing watercolour monotypes, where you paint with watercolours onto a PVC plate that has been prepared with gum arabic. After studio manager Sara-Aimée Verity showed us exactly what to do, we got stuck straight in (pausing briefly for expressed coffee, biscuits and candyfloss-soft banana bread – no half measures at WE, for sure)

I’d grabbed an old sketchbook on my way out of the studio, and it was one where I’d drawn my teapots and jugs at home (used in this tea towel design, now discontinued). I turned my PVC plate over and traced the teapots, then painted on the prepared surface with watercolour, a bit of resist, and drew with watercolour pencils and an HB pencil too. The gum arabic seems to provide a pretty universally friendly surface to work on.

I also cut a piece of tissue paper with the design on one of my teapots, and master printer Zhané Warren demonstrated how to attach this using a method called chine collée.

When we printed, the chine collée didn’t work out properly, so ended up operating as a mask instead, which was fine (see below).  Overall, I think the yellow teapot worked out best with a consistent idea of removal and resist makes a stronger image than the crude lines of the watercolour pencil over the delicate blue.

It’s funny – doing this workshop is supposed to be for letting go and experimenting with new knowledge, and results are really not the aim of the thing, and yet I found it so difficult to let go of the idea of making a finished product. I suppose having access to this amazing print studio and all its fine equipment isn’t an everyday event, so I want to make something ‘good’ to take away with me. Perhaps what I should do is book myself in for a week and work there all day every day and then see what happens.

I tried a second print, again with my teapots, this time using a mixture of watercolours and marker pen. And although some of it didn’t turn out as I expected, I do like this one (below), partly because it’s so different from anything I might make with other media. Hmm, you know, I think I’m going to think about that idea of booking myself in at Warren Editions: I may be the kind of chronically results-driven perfectionist who needs this kind of a sanitarium stay.

The next monotype workshop at Warren Editions is in May and I highly recommend it. There are only 6 places available, so hurry up and book your spot.