monotype toolbox

It's hard to believe that nearly six months have passed since I wrote the last post, and yet much has happened in that time. A dear friend passed away in early February, and as successor trustee for her estate, much of my time since then has been taken up with legal and other matters that have drained both emotion and energy. A second workshop with Ron Pokrasso in January introduced both Jerome and me to SolarPlate and ImageOn printmaking. Then, late last month, I met my artist friend Phyllis at Timberwick once again, for a full week of instruction from Ron. Much of the material was a review for me, yet a second time through only added to my depth of understanding. More importantly, I now sense that I have a substantial toolbox of monotype techniques, and I am beginning to create new work that takes advantage of a wide variety of approaches.

My list of techniques echoes Ron's "layers and plates" approach, and includes: (1) layering multiple inked plates on a single print, (2) using ghosts of plates as springboards for new prints, (3) playing with the viscosity of multiple inks on a single plate, (4) integrating thin papers in chine collé, (5) creating and printing intaglio plates (SolarPlate and drypoint), (6) creating and printing collographic plates, and (7) veiling (partially covering prints with opaque white or tinted ink).

Gallery 24 here in Torrey is giving me a solo exhibition this coming July, so I have a deadline and purpose to my work. I hope to have about twenty presentable monoprints to show.

The image above is a monoprint with both collography and SolarPlate images, 8" x 10".