Monoprinting: third time's a charm

Since I had two weeks before my trial presentation, I decided that was enough time for one more day of monoprinting in the studio, so off I went. This time, however, I decided to only dampen the paper just before printing with a light mist - and only on the thicker Kozo paper. I also decided to return to my Cranfield, water-washup inks as they are a bit more fluid - and I have some leftover ink from a previous session that I wanted to use up.

I also decided to print on full sheets of paper, rather than pre-cut strips. This allows me to divide, cut or fold the final pages however I wish, as well as use up the entire surface area of the inked perspex plate. Here are a few snapshots - I wasn't going for the full-on rainbow, but it's what I incidentally ended up with anyway! I didn't worry too much about this, though, as I knew the colours would be separated when the papers were ready to be cut and folded.

Playing around with composition:

Creatures emerging in the process:

And finally laying down the stencils for the first print:

I lightly dampened the first sheet for monoprinting - a thicker Kozo paper that would benefit from being softened with a light mist, but I only used a very light mist this time with successful results - phew! The other papers - which are much thinner - were printed completely dry.

Here's the back of the first print, before pulling the paper:

And the remaining perspex plate with the stencils and ink:

I, unfortunately, forgot to photograph the inked stencils on the press bed. Honestly, I was so focussed on getting the stencils to just lie in place - they were SO sticky with ink! And they are so tiny and fiddly, it was a tiring process. You can find a similar step in the previous post on monoprinting. Here are a few more photos of my third monoprinting day, which, thank goodness, has been the most successful one so far!

This one is just the stencils printed on Usu Kuchi paper:

And this is a print of the remaining ink from the perspex, printed on Gampi. I was a bit disappointed with how much ink transferred, but not discouraged. I might consider printing stencils over the top of the heavy ink once this has a chance to dry.