Linear Monoprint Portraits

I love to draw with monoprinting. It makes you focus on being economical with line and of course, you get that lovely quality of print that is so different to other mark making.


These ones are worked direct to the sketchbook page. You'll see with this method that you get some incidental tonal marks as well as the drawn lines. That's just the characteristic of this process and not to be seen as a fault, however sometimes that background transfer of ink is far too great. In this one, below, you'll see that the lines are lost in the background tone. It's happened because I had too much ink on the plate. Even though I've done tons of monoprinting, it's still not easy to get it right every time!


I've started to clean it up by painting the background area with white acrylic. That's helped to define the profile a lot better. Now I have to decide what to do within the face so balance the tones.



Above, this is the same print as the top image, but I've added a collage of some hand lettering. 

All these monoprints are done with watersoluble printing ink on paper. If you're interested in giving monoprint a try, there's a free video workshop with me on DMTV called Exploring Monoprint. Here's a link:


Thanks for visiting today.
Back soon,
Laura
xx

Comments