Turns out the monoprints I posted aren’t really monoprints, they’re more accurately called linear monotypes, and might not be as common as I thought. Either that or it’s such a well know technique that no one bothers to talk about it! Regardless, I thought I’d post a mini how to about it, obviously I’m not an expert, this is just the way I do things.

You will need:

• 1. block printing ink. (can be waterbased or oil based. Oil is messier, water dries quicker)
• 2. something in which to mix your ink.
• 3. a brayer.
• 4. a flat, non porous surface. Glass or acrylic work well, or even a kitchen surface, so long as you clean up quickly.
• 5. a mixing tool- preferably an old brush.
• 6. a stack of nice paper.
• 7. a stack of nasty paper. (unused printouts or newspaper!)

• 1. I’m not very organised, so when I’m doing something like this (in my case with the speedy-drying waterbased ink) I like to set out my space so I can just do things and not have to stress. So set up your tools!

• 2. Then mix your ink. I was going for a neutral purple colour.

I don’t have an image for the next few steps as I was trying to work quickly. But it’s pretty simple!

• 3. Pour a little ink onto your inking surface (glass/acrylic/kitchen work surface). Use your brayer to roll out an even coat. It should be just thick enough to cover the surface, and not so much that it’s too shiny.
• 4. Place your scrap paper over the ink- press down lightly over the whole inky area. (This step just cleans up your image- not necessary.)
• 5. Then start drawing! You can use ball point pen if you like to see what your doing, or you can do it blind and just use blunt instruments such as: the wrong end of a paintbrush, a coffee stirring stick, a finger, whatever you like!
• 6. Peel off your drawing when your done.
• 7. Repeat, just use the brayer each time to make sure your ink is even.
• 8. To clean up just use water and soap for water-based paint, and you can use vegetable oil of white spirits to clean oil based paint. However, then you shouldn’t't really pour this liquid down the drain, which is why I use water-based.

Some of my results:




Variations!

The method described above is linear monotyping (according to this handy website), however another, perhaps more common, method is to ink a shape directly onto the glass, and then use a clean brayer to transfer the ink onto the paper. You can also ink the entire glass, use fabric or a sponge to wipe off certain areas, and produce a reverse image. The former method is shown below.



There’s a few good groups on flickr for monoprinting, here and here. If you use my tutorial, I’d love to see what you come up with, so comment away!

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