Monotype Workshop

Many branches of Urban Sketchers have been having what they call 10 x 10 workshops for their members. Other than the fact that they offer 10 of them I'm not sure where the 10 x 10 comes from. I took two of them with our NYC Urban Sketchers last year and this year I plan to take a few more. 

Yesterday my friend, Denise Markbreit who is also one of the NYC Urban Sketchers members, offered a class in monotypes at her studio in Queens. I haven't done monotypes before and I was interested in the process. We were told to bring along a few sketches to work from so I made B&W copies of a few of mine. Denise showed us samples of her prints, explained the process, and showed us how she prints them. (I didn't take notes so do not take what I say here as gospel instructions because I don't always remember things correctly. Denise promised to send us notes.) She told us we could work on acetate pieces, yupo, or clear acrylic. These surfaces are transparent enough that you can see the sketches through them. She had treated the pieces with gum arabic mixed with water that she allowed to dry. That way the watercolor or caran d'ache will adhere to the surface. She had lots of supplies for us to share.

I worked from a sketch I did in Venice the last time we were there. The first surface I used was yupo but found it was a bit difficult to see all my lines through the paper. It would have helped to use a light box to see it better but I just kept peeking under the paper to see what was there. I painted the yupo with watercolors and added a bit of caran d'ache to get some lines. When it was completely colored it was ready for printing. We worked on Canson multi media 90 lb paper that we misted, placed on top of the prepped plate, and then ran through her press.

Here is the first print from my plate.

We ran it through the press a second time and got this ghost print. This can be left as is or I can add to it to enhance it. I'm not sure what I will do yet.

Later I redid the image on the same yupo using mostly carat d'ache. This image came out stronger when it was printed. I had made sure I had a lot of the pigment on the page.

 

I also did a print of one of my sketches from Porto. Denise had told us that if direction mattered we need to be careful to reverse the sketch. I didn't think it really mattered for this image or the one above.

For this one I used a combination of mostly carat d'ache with a bit of watercolor as well as these big water-soluble pencils Denise let us use. I like the strength of the color in this one.

We were running out of time, but I did print a ghost image of this one too.

There were only 6 of us in the afternoon class so we got a lot of individual attention from Denise. We all really enjoyed the class and would love to continue with another lesson, but Denise will be moving to NC soon so I don't think she has time to work with us again. Maybe that means we need to do a road trip to Asheville once she is settled there.

Here is a photo of the happy artists at the end of the workshop.

Julie, Jeff, Benedicte, Susan, Me, Shawne and Denise