As for me, I think printing is an exploration because it usually create an unexpected outcome eventually. To be honest, I rarely did painting before except experienced linocut once.
Therefore, today I just want to experiment the printing in different ways.
MONOPRINT
A print pulled in an edition of one. There is no series of identical prints that are signed and numbered. It is actually an image usually painted on glass or plexi-glass, and transferred ( or stamped) on paper.
Drawn Monoprint
For drawn print, I think the most essential points are smoothing the paint well and carefully deal with the paper. Thus, I decided to make some pictures with simple lines and also challenged fluidity of lines. However, at the beginning of printing, I totally had no idea about how to make it. After step-by-step study and try, I learnt the method eventually. As a result, I made some comic-style portraits and Chinese word on small pieces of paper.
Process Record
Find a picture.
Put the paper which is going to be printed beneath the picture
Put a piece of parchment paper on the picture.
Apply a nail-size printing ink (or acrylic paint) on the plastic board.
Use the brayer to apply the ink evenly on the board (the surface of it should not leave tiny peaks of ink).
Place these three pieces of paper together on the ink area.
Track the patterns of the picture on the parchment paper.
Gently lift up the paper and the print is completed.
Direct Monoprint
I think direct monoprint allows me to experiment more combination of materials by the help of the printing press. Therefore, by the inspiration of Henri Matisse's Icarus, I wanted to add more collage with the contrasting colour of background.
Hence, I selected pink as the colour that replace the blank white area. I firstly cut out the shape of my head and a side face from a piece of foam paper and coloured them with pink acrylic paint. Afterwards, I glued them on the board with black ink and randomly lay down a string on it. On another side, I teared some paper from the magazine which contained words like 'mix', 'balance' and 'pop'.
After this primary experiment, I found that black colour cannot react with the pink. So in the next page, I replaced black by blue and red to see if these two contrasting colours have any reaction.
In the next piece of work, I chose a big circular foam paper to apply the pink. Moreover, I thought it is really interesting because the shape of the background is a square. In the Chinese tradition, square represented the earth while circle was a symbol of the firmament.
To summarize this work, thought the paint was a bit much, the final outcome surprisingly shows a really nice effect. Whereas the background does not obviously presented, so in the next time, I may use a smaller brayer to separately roll the paint.
By the way, I think the colour that washed off from the board this time was amazingly beautiful.
Comments