MonoPrints

In July i started a printmaking course at Brisbane Institute of Art. I had done printmaking before at art school (mainly lino and screen prints) and always enjoyed it but it has been a while since i have done any, mainly because i just didn't have the equipment or easy access to a press.

The tutor we have is David Nixon, a very laid back guy and an excellent artist (some of his prints can be seen in the auction section of Impress Printmaker's Studio). 

The course has been great and introduced me to mono printing which i hadn't done before. The method we used (there are many others i guess) was rolling/painting/scraping an image with a variety of tools onto a sheet of acetate and rolling it through the press. You get only the one unique print (discounting ghost prints, that is, a re-print of the image a second time with reduced ink) hence the term: mono-print.

It is a very spontaneous way of making art and i found it very refreshing. And if an image doesn't work you just go to the next one. No need to agonize over failures. 

 

With that said though i found the failure rate to be pretty steep - probably 50-60% or so of the images i put out didn't work or simply weren't that interesting...Maybe this is something which practice will overcome..it's hard to say though, but i suppose it is all relative.

 These images I've posted are (to my mind) six of my more successful mono prints. The size of all of these is 21cm x 15 cm (printed on Stonehenge paper). I was starting small to become comfortable with the process and in some ways i felt more loose and free working smaller.

As we progressed i did go on to some larger monoprints which i will post later.

Brisbane area paintings

Will start off with some work from earlier this year and slightly previous...all of these are watercolour or gouache or a combination of both.

Brisbane River, watercolour and gouache, 37 x 46 cm

 

New Farm Park, watercolour and gouache, 38 x 56 cm

 

Brisbane River, gouache, 76 x 56 cm

 

Brisbane River Triptych, watercolour and gouache, 56 x 28 cm

New Farm Park, gouache, 56 x 76 cm

 

Blog Launch!

Greetings! Greetings and salutations!

Welcome to this blog...this is my first ever blog (blog virgin) so bear with me..

Basically the purpose of this blog will be twofold: i) a visual diary and documentation of my artwork and ii) a promotional and advertising tool for said artwork. I'm aiming to become a wee bit more commercially minded than i have been in the past. But I'll also be posting some sketches, life drawings (well the good ones anyway)..and other doodles which may (or may not) be of any interest.