Monoprinting workshop 1

This semester we have the opportunity to explore more print making with our print tech Caroline, to help with our upcoming project for our Tuesday module. The focus this time is around the technique of mono printing which we will use at a later date for our uncreative writing project.

In the upcoming sessions we will be provided with a ‘kit of parts’ that have been collected from Adam’s dad’s shed. We are then asked to produce several prints with these, forming a number of ‘sentences’ or ‘patterns’. The aim is to get us to think about how the use of repetition, accent glyphs and spacing can suggest or apear to instruct a reader of variations and changes in the potential sounds or meanings that may be ‘read’ from the type forms we have just created.

I had never done monoprinting like this before. We all suited up in aprons and Caroline demo’d what we would be doing over the next 2 weeks.

With these various shapes we had to ink them up using any ink colour of our choice using a roller and the standard back and forth method, then arrange the parts accordingly either to spell out a word or just to play around with the possibilities of shape and form. Then we carefully transferred our arrangements to the roller machine, lined it up, placed down our fresh paper and got to rolling.

Once we felt comfortable enough we could be a lot more creative with our outcomes, thinking about colours, layering, negative and positive space, patterns etc.

I really enjoyed the freedom of creativity with this technique, however, it takes a lot of trial and error. A few of my prints came out a lot more textural and patchy than I hoped for, purely down to not inking the pieces enough or oversaturating them. But I’m sure by the second session I will feel a lot more comfortable and confident with it.

One problem we encountered as a group is that when doing a word you have to consider the fact that it will print backwards once it’s gone through the roller, so you have to carefully orchestrate it in order for it to read left to right.

Caroline showed us some packing using monoprinting, something that we could consider doing next session or taking forward with us. I think it’s really effective at communicating a fresh take on type and shapes.