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I taught a monoprint workshop at the Lillstreet Art Center in Chicago on Saturday, and as usual, the students all produced some nice looking work. Even for people who have done some form of printmaking before, they are always surprised and pleased when they pull the first print from the plexiglass plate and see the unique marks that they've made. First up, a contact (or trace) monoprint, in two colours: Then a blazing full colour additive monoprint: Now a ghost print (printed from the faint residue of ink left on the plexiglass plate after pulling the main print): Bravo, students!

Kristine Harvey , teacher at Frankfort High School in Michigan, sent me a new batch of monoprints from her class of high school art students, and they're just as good as the first. I've pulled out a few to show in this post, again not to single them out as better than the ones I didn't select, but this time just to highlight the different kinds of monoprint techniques that these young people were trying. First, we have what I think are contact monoprints (where you roll out a thin layer of ink, place a sheet of paper on top, and draw through the back of the paper, the marks being made wherever the paper makes contact with the ink): The next one looks like it was created using a combination of mask and stencil: Then a multilayered print, where it looks like the artist reapplied the same sheet of paper to a surface that had been worked on more than once: Finally, another additive monoprint that has some notably free, loose, expressive mark making: Congrat...

Five months ago, an educator called Kristine Harvey took my week-long monoprinting class at the Interlochen College of Creative Arts. She really enjoyed the class and made some great personal artistic breakthroughs in this medium, as you can see by this print she made: Kristine contacted me recently to say that she had been working with her students at Frankfort High School, Michigan, on making monoprints. With their permission, I am posting images of some of the prints they made. First we have some abstract shapes: What impresses me about those is how comfortable the students are with abstract shapes, how well they organised them around the frame of the rectangle, and how eye-catching is the combination of colours and design. Next we have works in progress: As you can see, there's sensitive art-making happening here, which is why I don't want to single any one image out over any other. In my opinion, everything I've seen so far suggest...

While teaching a monoprint class for adults at Interlochen a few days ago, I wandered around the studio room taking short videos on my S5 of participants as they worked. Then I used a feature of the camera and cloud photo storage app in the latest version of Android to knock out this little movie. Total time from filming until playing it back on YouTube: 15 minutes.

Today was my third day of teaching in the adult summer classes at Interlochen, and the first day of my monoprinting class. It's the second or third time I've taught this class here, and as usual it doesn't take long for the beauty and simplicity of monoprinting to take hold of the participants and lead to some very fine results. We started the day with a talk about the history of monoprint, illustrated by projecting images from my laptop. Then we got into contact monoprints, which this class liked so much that it took us up to 2 pm until we changed techniques. For the rest of the session, I helped the students make prints by painting with the inks using brushes on the monoprint plates, with thick and thin ink, then taking prints from the plate with dry paper and damp paper, using hand pressure and using the printing press. Everyone got at least one fine looking print out of the day: It's hard work, printmaking. Not like working in a factory, of cours...

Last week, I went to the Interlochen College of Creative Arts to teach a 3-day intensive course in monoprint printmaking to a group of 6 adults. A monoprint is a type of print you make by painting or rolling ink onto a surface (a metal plate or plexiglass, for instance), manipulating the ink in different ways, then pressing paper onto the plate and applying pressure, either by hand-rubbing or a printing press. You usually only get one print at a time this way, hence the name "monoprint." (Strictly speaking, there is a difference between a monotype and a monoprint, but I'm not terribly purist about that.) It was a great class, very tiring for all concerned, but we got some great prints out of it. On the first day, we spent some time outside making contact monoprints while doing some blind contour drawing: Here are a few prints from that session: The next photo shows a plexiglass plate on the bed of my portable printing press, the image painted freely with ...

“Monotype: Mediums and Methods for Painterly Printmaking,” Julia Ayres (Watson-Guptill, 2001).  Buy the book here . The book that I’m recommending this week is a practical guide to monotype/monoprint (purists say that they are two different kinds of prints, though I tend to say ‘monoprint’ to mean both). A monotype is a print that: starts with an application of ink on a surface, either rolled or painted; is further manipulated by adding to it or wiping parts away; results in a one-off print. This differs from intaglio or relief printmaking because you can make an image very quickly by just painting with pigment, laying paper over it, and applying some pressure. Julia Ayres provides a useful introduction to the history of the monotype, and follows that with chapters containing specific instructions on the different ways of making these prints: additive monotype, subtractive monotype, contact monotype; working with watercolours, oil based inks, and lithographic inks; using ...

Back to the kitchen table in Mount Carroll, IL. I took the prints that I made yesterday, and added more circles and shapes using the contact monoprint/watercolour monoprint technique: And just the contact monoprint technique: Nice. Except for the sore wrist.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

On day 2 of the printmaking class (Tuesday), I led the participants through different ways of doing colour monoprints, using the subtractive method, the additive method, and combinations of the two. In the afternoon, they started combining monoprints with drypoints cut into aluminum flashing tiles or sheets of duralar. Some of the great results can be seen in the following short slideshow: If I was going to miss the last two World Cup round of 16 matches, I'm glad it was for this reason.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader