Mono Prints of Water

I have explored mono printing water with a range of techniques, some inspired by artwork I have studied, others by a video tutorial I followed on painting technique.

In this print the ink was a diluted wash with turps. It was very hard to control, plate very slippery. 3 layers developed from photo and drawing, the 3rd layer of white was not effective.

After this I did a study into painting ripples from a video tutorial to get a getter understanding of how painters created the illusion of water. I used those paintings as a basis for these reductive print value studies, which were also inspired by Turners print Study of Sea and Sky. I used rag and cotton buds to wipe the plate.

Texture of paper very obvious in this print.

Addition of yellow lifted this image considerably, more successful texture, smoother paper.

Next I tried painterly mono prints, again based on my painted study.

Single plate study based on painting. Over saturated colors. I thought the thin application of ink would dilute the saturation of the color.

In my first practice at 2 layers I printed a blue background with reductive clouds in the top half. I added pink to the clouds in the second layer which was ineffective. The blue ripples worked well, including some use of perspective with ripples. Right ghost print on damp paper. I could use these with a lino print by printing lino over the pink areas. Unclear horizon lines make these images unclear. I could also develop with chine colle and lino.

 This much more successful attempt at a 2 layer print based on my painted study of water used vertical underpainting of reflections of the sky and over printed ripples like in the painting tutorial. The quality of print could be improved, both went through press unevenly, white patch on left on first, white patch on right on ghost. Ghost has some extra lines from previous wiping on the plate. Again, careful positioning of lino blocks or chine colle development could make these useable for this assignment.

Neocolour monoprints

I tried a new technique to try and imitate some of Turners free marks on his water studies. I thought neocolour crayons would work well for this. I drew on the plate then printed onto damp paper.

In this print I added a few small marks of neo color, I think this was really effective at creating depth by making more solid lines in the ripples and creating perspective.

This print came out a bit unbalanced. The water worked well but the horizon line is too heavy and the pink in the clouds is too strong.