Making art can be so frustrating, things don’t always turn out right. I was down at Swansea Print Workshop yesterday working on a new full-colour monotype. It’s a complex process and things can go badly wrong at any stage. But more often than not, it will go wrong when you remove the final plate, after a long day of printmaking. And that’s what happened yesterday. The technique produces two pieces – the first one is full colour and the second one is much paler, a ‘ghost’ monotype. Well, the first one I did I left far too much dark blue ink on the plate for the final layer and the whole thing is almost black!
Then when I put the final plate onto the paper for the ghost image, I wasn’t paying attention and I put the plate on the wrong way round so the final print is a higgledy piggledy mish mash. Thank goodness yesterday is over.
If you want to find out more about the full-colour reduction monotype technique, please click here.
I’m currently working on a series of expressive drawings of ancestral sites and if you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.
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I know exactly what you’re talking about. Printmaking can be an especially tricky business. Painting gives you a lot more control over the results, but often the rewards of printmaking are the unexpected results.
Yes, sometimes I whoop with joy, others I stifle a tear
While not knowing what your ultimate intention was, I have to say I sort of like the “higgledy-piggledy mish-mash”. Something about the rhythm of the lines…
Thanks Alli, I guess when you have an idea in your head you just can’t accept anything different. I’ll probably like it in a few months 🙂
Thanks for posting your disasters as well as your triumphs Rosie, we all have them, that’s for sure, and it’s good to share them, it makes us all human 😊
Thanks Phil, it doesn’t happen too often, fortunately.
I have some lovely paper to recycle into something else though ☺
The frustration of printmaking! That not-knowing-till-the-end works both ways, sometimes magic, sometimes disaster. As long as the magic happens every now and then!
Fortunately it seems to turn out well most of the time. Oh dear, now I have gone and jinxed myself
At least I have mistakes to learn from 😕
It’s like that in art, some days you feel you’d be farther ahead if you stayed out of the studio. But luckily there are better days.