Monoprint, my happy little accident

“We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents.” 

- Bob Ross

Monoprinting, the one try printing process. This project was absolutely fun to do. Having only one shot (maybe two f you can get a ghost print with your matrix) to ink your matrix make the design and run it through the press.

Designing the plate is easy, and there are many ways you can design your plate. You can use your ink roller to roll on the ink. use pointy objects to draw onto the ink, use turpentine to manipulate the ink on the plate or or can use a paint brush to paint on the ink. 

this method of printing from what i can say is a very fun way to experiment with color, and it was more fun while doing it this semester since my teacher got us raw color pigments. We were able to mix our own colors, not being confined to just the same set of colors all the time. Which for me, was very difficult, just because everything i print i want to be printed in black. 

So for this project i wanted to use color i wanted something that would pop on the paper and grab my classes attention. Even though i didn't get the bright color i wanted, and it still ended up being a bit grey with just hints of color. It was still a very good piece in my mind.

For this project  we had to use the words change and transformation. We needed to make four different prints two with words and two without, and none of the words could be change or transformation. So naturally i took to the thesaurus, and for one of the four prints i chose the word MUTATION! Originally i wanted this to be one of the prints with the word on it, but when m actual idea came to me i realized it didn't need the word. 

So i went and did some image research and got to sketching. My concept was to show a mutating DNA structure. Using a dark background to bring out bright colors. 

So i did my sketch. picked out what colors would work, and i thought pinks, oranges, purples and blues were going to be perfect. It was mostly because most pictures i found of DNA structures were that color. On top of all that color i was going to ass a very moldy looking green to make the structure look like it's being mutated.

I used black as the background color and used turpentine and ink to start painting on the DNA structure. Mostly pink with hints of purple in it. 

Now painting on the ink went pretty easy, and the structure looked pretty cool the colors worked and i was ready to print. So i ran my plate through the press, took everything off to see my final piece, and that's where i realize i made a really huge accident. Now this accident was huge, but it worked perfect for my piece. I Managed to mutate my mutation even more.

This is my ghost print, it's not as colorful as i was going for, but there are hints of pink, purple and green behind the black. It stands out so much on the light grey back ground it just looked great. The way the ink ran just made it more convincing that it was mutated, and even though it was an accident it still works to show the concept.

From doing monoprints i realized you need to have more than one try to get what you want and you can't just assume the first try will be the best. You will definitely go through many accidents, some will be good and some won't but it's worth the try. Because in the end you'll still end up with something interesting.

~Lesley