I’ve completed my second day at the East Anglian Artists’ group Artworks spring exhibition (the final day) – this time as the artist demonstrator. The first part of the morning was very quiet (only the very keen visit a gallery at eleven on a sunday), so I took the moment of calm to record my little set-up in the corner of the gallery…
A non-portrait of the artist at work…
I was just doing a little monoprinting (aka monotyping, both terms seemingly interchangeable), a technique which is as much painting as it is printmaking. I decided to downsize my art materials for this event and only took the colours that I have in handy, small tubes, the ones that I find deep within the bargain buckets of art stores – hence a very limited palette – two browns, a green, process cyan, yellow ochre and a greeny-browny-grey…
Below are some of the monoprints, at various stages of printing… the technique is very simple and very adaptable – roll, paint, wipe, smear, scrape, inscribe… and then press the paper onto the surface (in this case, glass); you can also use surface pressure (a pencil for example) on the back of the paper to create interesting marks and textures… repeat the process as necessary… here, I used acrylic paints because of the reduced set-up, but oil-based inks are extensively used…
some monoprints pegged up to dry…
The afternoon was much busier and more engaging. I met and chatted to quite a lot of people, including someone who plans to bid on my work in the Art Auction next week… When I later arrived back, I pinned up twenty beginnings of something new, and perhaps unsurprisingly a green theme emerged… not sure whether to tear these down into smaller works, before progressing further with the variations on green…
Here are some close-ups, showing some surface textures…
Somebody asked me how many layers I might add before they are deemed to be finished – it’s usually more than ten but probably less than twenty – but I am not counting… and inbetween there will be some surface erasures…
Should I speculate publicly at this stage what I might do next with these works on paper? I contemplate (or rather procrastinate upon) doing certain things, but then don’t pursue them, then later I will discover that another artist has actually done it… meaning it’s time to think again…
This time, it’s a Jazz Green thing…
April 27th, 2010 - 4:25 pm
Hi Jazz – interesting post in terms of both text & images, as always.
Had something of a ’saw this & thought of you’ moment recently, when choosing a visual resource book on the subject of Surfaces and Textures for our college library – lots of ‘found paintings’ & evidence of various types of process to be enjoyed…
April 27th, 2010 - 5:37 pm
Many thanks for the comment. I wonder what book you are referring to – and should/do we have it in our library? Anyhow, such resource books will help train young eyes to ’see’ something new in the seemingly ordinary, whatever their artistic discipline…
May 5th, 2010 - 9:23 pm
With apologies for the delay, Jazz – the book is ‘Surfaces & Textures: a Visual Sourcebook’ by Polly O’Neil (whose photographs liberally illustrate the volume), published by A & C Black in 2008.
One of our foundation students loaned the book from the library today, which allowed me the opportunity to plug your blog & in particular the ‘found paintings’ of course!
May 5th, 2010 - 11:04 pm
Thank you for the pluglet – I think I may need to do a complete re-hang of the ‘found paintings gallery’ soon – and perhaps develop a separate ‘found drawings’ section…