Monotypes Week 2

My second week of printing monotypes was an experiment with dark field monotypes. A dark field monotype starts with a plate coated in black ink with a sheet of dry printing paper on top. An image is then drawn onto the back of the sheet of paper. Pressure from the drawing utensil (pen, pencil, stick, cotton swab, fingertip, etc...) transfers ink onto the paper, leaving a white area on the plate. After the drawing is transferred, the front of the paper will have dark lines on a white background. Running the plate through the press will create a print with white lines on a dark background.
For my prints I used a drawing I made while in Rome this past spring. The drawing is of the obelisk in St. Peter's square in the Vatican. As with most prints, the image turns out backwards from the original drawing. Next time I will probably reverse my image on tracing paper before using it for a print.

Monotypes Week 1

One of the classes I am taking this semester is all about Printmaking. The first few weeks are focused on creating monotypes, and then moving on to the various methods of intaglio printing. The first week of class focused on light field monotypes.
A monotype is a printing technique that produces unique prints that, unlike most forms of printing, cannot be exactly duplicated. Light field monotypes are created by painting printing ink onto a non-porous surface, and pressing paper onto the plate. After the initial print, the artist can add or subtract ink from the plate and create an additional image. This process of reworking and printing is what makes monotypes so unique.
I created two prints of waterlilies. The first print had a dark background with lighter lily pads. For the second print I added more ink to the lily pads, and splattered some solvent on the background for some texture.

WIP: Owl Hat

My current Work In Progress (or WIP) is a knit hat with an owl cable pattern. Whenever I find an interesting pattern or project idea I file it away to pull out later. I found the pattern on the Penguin Purls blog in December... and it didn't stay stashed away for very long! I needed to make myself a new hat because I walk everywhere and my crocheted hat was letting in too much cold air.
I'm using a Stitch Nation by Debbie Stoller yarn called Full O' Sheep. It is a gorgeous single ply Peruvian Wool in a color called Thyme. This happens to be my absolute favorite shade of green (my winter coat is even this color), so when I saw this yarn at the store I just had to have it! Stay tuned for photos of the finished hat.

Kool-Aid Yarn

A couple weeks ago I spent the day dyeing yarn in my crock pot with Kool-Aid. I have used this technique before, and wanted to share! I started my experiments last year after seeing this tutorial from the do stuff! blog. The idea is to use a crock pot as the dye vessel instead of a pot of boiling water on the stove. Dyeing yarn this way is easy, but it takes some patience... and is highly addicting!
For this skein I used pink lemonade, black cherry, ice blue raspberry lemonade, orange, and two packets of lemonade.
This was my first attempt from a year ago. I followed the article's instructions closely, down to the color/flavor choices (although I might have used cherry instead of strawberry.)
My next dyed skein used strawberry, grape, and orange. Blending colors closer together in the color wheel produced a more subtle variegated yarn. The orange and grape worked well to create a less intense color. I used this yarn to knit a slip stitch lace scarf.

About Me

Like most people, my life for the last two years got busy and things like blogging fell by the wayside. I decided starting fresh and refocusing my blog would be the best path to take in a situation like this. So this post will tell a little bit about me, and what I've been busy with the last two years.

I'm a college senior studying Art Education. The last two years have been characterized by investigations into different art media including film photography, oil painting, figure drawing, metalsmithing, and digital media. I have also had the opportunity to teach art at the elementary and high school levels. Getting in the field and teaching was a great experience, and I am looking forward to a semester of student teaching in the fall of 2011. I was also fortunate to embark on a study abroad trip through Europe in the spring of 2010. I traveled with 27 classmates and 2 professors through Greece, Italy, Germany, France, and England visiting museums, churches, and archeological sites. During that trip my confidence as an artist and as a person flourished.

Condensing two years into a short paragraph hardly seems sufficient, but hopefully this explains why my posting has been severely lacking. In the future you can expect to see posts about the projects I am currently working on (both for classes, and on my own time), tutorials on how I do what I do, and links to art and craft articles I find interesting or enlightening.