Monoprinting

I am glad to have the chance to publish some of my experiences on  The Fireblog. I follow this blog for a long time and I appreciate your works, they inspire me.

Thanks Beth for this opportunity!

My name is Carmina Plosceanu and I live in Bucharest, Romania. Ten years ago I discovered textile art on the internet, but I started working only in 2008, after I joined the Yahoo group called "Peticelul Romanesc" (Romanian Patch) which gathered together some Romanian ladies from Europe, who loved textile art. The Group has completed the work in 2011 and then I enrolled in Milliande Art Commnunity, where I participated in many artistic exchanges and I had much to learn.
I am self-taught, I learned to work by studying of different techniques on the internet. After I experienced various textile art techniques, I started doing something else, textile collages, paper collage, textile dyeing, painting, plastic fusing, surface design, paper or textile beads, tyvek,  monoprinting, etc.

 
Today I want to present some monoprintings. First I tried to do monoprinting with acrylic on a ceramic plate. The things have not really successful, perhaps because I have not chosen the best color consistency.

For this, I supplemented by adding a few lines of drawing and the result is this ...

Then I made myself a gelliplate, a little one...

In this case, things went easier....

  

  

Then I tried to monoprint by using a plastic sheet...hum, could be better, acrylic dries too quickly!!
Finally, I had to add some corrections, color effects, on the monoprinted sheet.

From all this, I was able to draw a conclusion: it is true that, working with gelliplate, things are going better.

Carmina

http://carminarte.blogspot.ro/ 

 

Mono Printing.... and Lutradur

Mono Printing.

Paint was layered on the printing plate . Then the marks were made in the paint. The Star shape was a metal cookie stamp on a handle. 

You can create a gelatin plate to do this or you can purchase a gelli plate by Gelli Arts. Or you can use a piece of acrylic or a glass plate. 

the frugal crafter has a video of how to do mono prints and she also has tested recipies on how to make your own gelli plate. 

The technique for mono printing is the same whether on glass, acrylic or a gelatin plate. 

Layer the paint onto your surface with a brush, brayer, squeegee, credit card. 

Make marks in the paint with stamps, roller stamps, brushes, even your fingers. 

Then take the Lutradur and lie in on top of the paint.

 Pat it down. Or use a clean dry brayer to roll over it. 

Then carefully peel the print off and set aside to dry. Pattern and colour at once!

Great texture when you use heavier acrylic paints.

or use less paint and get a lighter effect. I can't quite remember this may have been a second print when we had our play day  with my small group. 

This was done with roller stamps. 

One thing to remember when you mono print is the design will be a reverse image of what you have drawn. This becomes a problem when you use letters as they come out reversed.

Mono printing is endless fun. Each print is unique. Sometimes you can get a second lighter print.  

Grab your paints, stamps, string, mark makers of any kind. I am always on the look out for interesting potato mashers now.

You can use mono printing with paper of course or fabric but I like the way the lutradur holds structure or form and allows for the translucent of the lutradur. 

 The plates wipe clean quickly so you can create many prints in a short time to add to your stash for mixed media supplies or your art work. 

So try some mono printing the next time you feel the need to create! 

Have you used mono prints in your work? or tried it with Lutradur? 

Let us know your tricks, success or failures. 

Jo 
thesewinggeek.blogspot.ca

Gelatin Monotypes

Beth and I got together yesterday and played with gelatin monotypes.  Beth had the camera and took the process pictures so I will let her tell the process and procedures.  Too keep this post from being too long, I will only show one type of print I made.  I'll post a second type of print later.

For these prints I worked from light to dark and used Orange Rust, Fuchsia, and Navy Blue dyes. To create designs, I used template plastic cut into squares and rectangles and some fancy "yarn."  I will happily show you the best of these prints.

What I learned:
1.  First I tried rolling the dye onto the gelatin plate but it was too thin of a layer to print well. After that we used a credit card to spread the dye.  The "best" thickness took some experimentation.
2.  Beth and I had different thicknesses of dye paste.  We found the thicker dye paste gave us better results.
3.  The size of the bubble patch is important.  Our gelatin plate had two huge sections of bubbles.  Therefore, all of our prints have areas that are really heavy with dye. (see above)  If I were to make another gelatin plate, I would separate the bubbles into smaller groupings.
4.  If you are careful about laying down the fabric, you can get shadows of the bubble blobs in the different colors used on the plate.  I kinda like the look.  Here is a close-up. Notice the orange and fuchsia shadows of the navy.

5.  The thickness of the dye over the bubble section is really critical. Those bubbles can hold tons of dye and can saturate the fabric with dye leaving great blobs.  However if the bubbles are carefully scrapped leaving less dye, you can get great patterns.  Here are the good, bad, and ugly pictures of bubbles.