Monoprinting & Risograph Printing

Today's morning workshop was about monoprinting. We started with some observational drawing from taxidermy animals - I chose a magpie.

We then used these drawings to create a monoprint. I covered a plastic sheet in dark blue ink, and removed some of ink by rubbing with a white-spirit covered cloth and scraped it with chopsticks. The sheet is then pushed through a printing press onto paper.

I then went over print with yellow ink in background for extra contrast.

I initially found it quite challenging to understand all steps in the monoprinting process, but I began to get the hang of it towards end of the session. In the future, I would like to experiment with monoprinting more by trying out the different ink removing techniques I saw others using, like using stencils to make clear shapes.

The afternoon workshop was focused on risographs. Before the session, I had to create a logo in the form of a two layer pencil drawing.

Then I replicated it in print form with a risograph machine by printing a pink ink layer and then a blue layer.

I liked the way pencil texture showed in the print. The layering of the pink on the blue was a mistake but produced a nice effect.