MONO PRINTING MADNESS!

Beginnings

This is the beginning of my next painting.  This is a YUPO surface with acrylic brayered on and then stamped into.  My idea is to add collage and then a drawing or painting on top of that.  I have been having waaaaaay too much fun making mono prints with my new extra large Gelli plate.  I never took a class in printing techniques, except for serigraph (think silk screen printing) which I was terrible at.  I can't get things to register.  The other problem is starting with the finished product in your head and then reverse engineering to have the right steps to get the desired results.  My brain isn't wired that way.  I came across a fabulous artist, Anne Moore, who does these stunning mono prints.  I studied them very carefully to try to determine her sequencing.  I am starting to understand what happens with subsequent layering using masks, stencils, stamps and glaze colors, opaque colors, going from light to dark, dark to light, etc.  I think you just have to do it a lot to understand it.  In the meantime, it is exciting to see what you think you are going to get and what actually shows up!  I did some printing on Tyvek, some on 90lb watercolor paper, but mostly on white tissue paper and deli paper.  The other fascinating thing I was playing with is color and what happens when you layer odd combinations over each other.   Some of the mono prints are just one pull and I decided to leave them that way because I thought it was interesting collage paper.  Some of the papers look like finished abstract paintings to me.  I may stick them down to a sturdy substraight and leave them, or I may tear them up and use sections of them at a time, or use them whole in a painting.  Working this way creates lots of difficult decisions, but sometimes results in very unusual paintings that would NEVER HAVE COME ABOUT if I worked in a predictable, safe and traditional way.  The piece above seems very busy to add collage and then a drawing but most of it will probably be obscured by the time I am done.  One of the things I loved about Anne Moore's paintings is the under layers barely showing through, creating a mystery and history at the same time.  That is what I am attempting to do.  If things don't work out, well, it is only a piece of paper and a little bit of paint. 

Delli paper used to clean brayer

first printing white tissue 

Some overprinting on tissue, for collage

Over printing with stamp, for collage

Three layers,  on tissue paper

Four layers on tissue paper