Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Monoprinting on fabric

I was inspired to do some monoprinting finally by a post on a friend's blog , I had been going to when I got around to it since I saw the article in Quilting arts no 40 by Frances Holliday Allford.  That was three years ago!
So, I got around to it.
I am not going to go into the process here, because there are many ways of making a gelatin plate, or using alternatives such as acetate or plexiglass, and many more ways of using these to make monoprints.  Check my friend's post for a step by step.  Or try quilting arts or quilting arts tv
I will just show you my results.  The eye candy.
This one used very dilute paints that I allowed to blend into each other.
On this one I started with the blue, then drew pink tadpoles and yellow tadpoles. lol
On this one I kept dropping bits of colour on top of the other colours and swirling with my finger.
This one was speckled with a toothbrush.  If the paint is too dilute, the specks just spread.
This one used thicker paints (including a blue with globby bits)  and I just used my finger to create a bit of a marbled effect.
Another one with the thicker paints.
This last one used some very dilute paint, but I liked the effect I created by dragging a rubber brush across it.  I see potential there.
I only did a small experiment with limited colours and did not use a brayer or found objects or stamps, or stencils or any of the million other things you can use with this technique, so there will be more monoprinting for sure.

This was great fun and using my fingers was like being in kindergarten again!