Monotype Print Still Life Art – adding Colored Pencil to your Print

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Monotype Print Still Life – adding Colored Pencil to your Art

I spent a foggy afternoon transferring printmaking inks from leaky containers to new ones, sent gratis by the manufacturer. Good customer service!

While pouring and scraping ink into shiny new containers, I rolled out a bit of leftover ink on a sheet of plexiglass for a speedy, small, dark field monotype print session. They are so fast! It’s one of my favorite things about this printmaking method.

Resources for the Artist In You

• If you’re feeling a bit of creative stuckness, here’s a handmade zine with a few ideas to get yourself unstuck, by Zak Foster.
• Here’s a post from my archives – what is the difference between colored pencils and watercolor pencils? in case you need a refresher.
• If you sell your work on Etsy, this very helpful podcast, made by Etsy, reviews best practices for titles, keywords, tags, categories, and listing details, based on Etsy’s own search algorithm function. Give it a listen here.
• Are you a visual thinker? If you identify visualization as a required trait of a creative mind, read this short essay by Austin Kleon about aphantasia – when creative people cannot visualize anything at all.

Use What You Have

I like searching through the house for items that lend themselves to creative work, even if they were meant for uses elsewhere.

In the last post, I demo’d an intaglio print of a cat from a carton of frozen fruit pops (see that here). It was great fun, and full of surprises!

In the next post, I’m working on something similar. I want to test another paper carton intaglio print (this time from a box of Kleenex), made without a press, using a rolling pin instead.

I have no idea if it’ll work, but I’m creating the plate this afternoon, and I’m excited and hopeful that it’ll work. What’s your prediction? Do you think I’ll get enough pressure from the rolling pin to push the paper into the recessed line work to pick up the ink? Let me know your predictions in the comments. Pass or fail, I’ll share the results.

Have you seen all the fabulous printmaking projects artist are sharing on instagram, using recycled tetrapak packaging?

Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll see you in the next post –

Belinda

P.S. Speaking of Instagram collagraphs, take a look at the beautiful work in printmaker Jenny McCabe’s feed here.

Art Quote

There’s a question I like to ask myself, and it comes from Dr. Carol Dweck’s fabulous book, Mindset. Dweck writes about the difference between having a growth mindset, where you see your basic qualities as something you can nurture and grow, and having a fixed mindset, where you see your basic qualities as set in stone. When you have a fixed mindset, you always feel like you have something to prove. So when I’m feeling a lot of pressure to do incredible work, I’ll ask myself, “Therese, are you in the learning room or the proving room?” I always, always want to be in the learning room, and asking myself that question takes the pressure off. I’m here to learn and grow, and whatever the experience is, even if it’s standing up and giving a talk to 1500 people, I can learn from it. I believe that all too often, we put pressure on ourselves to do our “best work.” I strive to always be doing better work. I can always do a little better, and that’s where I try to live.

Therese Huston, in an interview with Gretchen Rubin

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