Monotype

Art 141

This course is about learning how to make visual decisions, (in a word, how to draw) by making images in a very flexible medium. Monotype is the unique of combinination drawing, painting and printmaking vocabularies. In addition to advancing your drawing skills and visual vocabulary, Monotype is an excellent introduction to Printmaking, the printing on paper of an image fixed to a plate. Through in depth demonstrations the course will explore many drawing, painting and printmaking ideas and will gradually acquire more complicated visual techniques as the semester progresses.

No chemicals will be used to prepare or secure an image on the printing plate, nor will the plate be scratched or incised.

A typical intaglio zinc plate is used (intaglio is the traditional term for etching), and the image is drawn with printmaking inks. Any device may be used to apply the ink to the plate, from cardboard squares and cloth rags to worn down brushes to finely pointed and precise sable brushes. One of the special advantages of monotype which sets it apart from any other medium is its complete subtractibility at any point in its development. Since the zinc plate is completely smooth, parts of the plate may be wiped clean at any time, and left or worked over. The completed image is in turn printed on cotton rag paper.

Printing requires that about half the ink transfer to the paper. The ink left on the plate provides the basis for re-thinking or continuing the original idea. This is where monotype becomes a generator of visual ideas.

Sometimes the residue of ink is a complete image in itself since the lighter impression it in turn prints may contain new illusions of light and space. At other times, most of the image is reworked, leaving little remaining of the previous printing. The plastic quality of ink makes these options possible. Once the image is on paper, it can even be overprinted, i.e., multiple impressions can be made on the same sheet of paper. (The print itself can be used to print another image, or counterproof, of the original.) The intaglio inks are very intense and saturated with color, and a new vocabulary evolves in the awareness of how the pigment appears with the bright paper reflecting through it.

The net result is the articulate and precise advancement of your visual idea, since you are faced with not only the result of the first printing, but also the residue or "ghost" image on the plate and ideas for changing that image. There will be many demonstrations specifically about how to start and how to continue an idea. There will be special emphasis on quality of light, texture and spatial illusion. This course is about learning how to draw by learning how to make visual ideas in a way that responds to your personal opinion.

Home | Screenprinting | Monotype | Etching | Exhibition

You may also want to visit the Department of Art and Art History at Providence College