Printmaking All Day – Tired and Happy Now!

I spent a long day at Swansea Print Workshop today making a large full-colour monotype. It’s a technique used by the Impressionists – Degas and Monet used to work over their monotypes in oil pastels. I started with a drawing in my sketchbook that I’d done in life drawing group. It’s gone through several incarnations including a scaled up drawing in conte crayons onto brown wrapping paper. I traced it to make a template and registration sheet for my planned monotype. It’s a complex process involving inking up a perspex plate three times, once in Process Yellow, once in Process Red and finally in Process Blue. At each stage, I make a drawing using the tracing as my starting point. The technique is great for exploring intensive mark-making. Firstly I print the yellow ‘drawing’ onto BFK Rives 250gsm paper. Then the red ‘drawing’ is printed over the yellow. Finally the blue ‘drawing’ is printed. The overprinting of the three translucent oil colours gives a full colour range from black to white and everything in between. I find it a very exciting technique to use. The model is a regular at our life drawing group and is a ‘Baby Boomer’ – I like using older models.

The technique is very long and involved and I spent the whole day on my feet and a lot of time turning the wheel of an enormous Radcliffe intaglio press. I’m shattered now but I’m well-pleased with my monotype. 🙂