Messy play!

#100days of hodgepodge update!

I find to believe it hard to believe we are in the last week of this project. I've enjoyed following and cheering on lots of other artists who have done it too.

It certainly embraces the sentiment: "The more I work, the more I want to work." Joan Miro

One of my favourite techniques when creating collage papers is monoprinting. On Instagram, many of my lovely followers had been asking how I do some of the linework, so I did a little video and explained my simple method.

There are many permutations of this. Sometimes I put stencils on the printing plate first and sometimes I make marks on the plate and then take a print. The process can be very addictive! And I've said before you can never have too many collage papers.

Just cover a sheet of acetate or Perspex with acrylic paint. I don’t bother rolling it out with a brayer but you can if you want a finer texture. I can sometimes take several prints if the paint is quite thick. Sometimes I use a fluid retarder so the paint doesn’t dry up too fast. More often than not I just work quickly. Put the paper on top you want the print on and use a tool to get some marks and impressions. I was using a dried up biro here. It prints a nice fuzzy line. Sometimes it's fun to blow up these on a photocopier which distorts the line even more.

The three photos above have a combination of mono printing as I described previously but also incorporating stencils that mask off shapes. It's fun to play around with frames cropping areas and experimenting with layout and composition.