How To Monoprint

A monoprint simply means a print that is a one-off that can't be copied. The technique really involves drawing. Take an inking roller and some black ink already spread out on a tray.

You need two surfaces, one to roll your ink out and one to actually make the print on. Take a little bit of ink, spread it out on the tray, but do not cover the roller too thickly as it needs to be even cover. Spread the ink all over the block.

For a block with a flat surface, you could just easily use a block of glass. Make a drawing which is really a print drawing of a picture. So, take a paper, the paper you're going to print onto, and lay it on top of the ink.

The thing to remember is to not press on because wherever you press on with your finger or side of the hand, it will make a mark because it will pick up the ink from the slab. So, be careful. You can either draw with a point or draw with the flat of your thumb to get a big area.

If you feel you're not so confident, what you can do to prepare is to draw on the back of the paper before you actually put onto and that gives you a guide which you can then go over. Start drawing at the top, being careful not to touch too much of the paper, following the edge, coming down and drawing what you see, not what you think you see which is always the key to drawing. Anything you draw is just a collection of shapes.

Go quite loose in the marks. Put some darker marks on some areas on shadow. Wherever you draw, remember it's going to pick up and will show on the final picture.

Cover a bigger area with your fingernail so it's going to pick up a bigger area of ink from the slab. By trying to pick up some of the ink with your finger, it will give a textured background. Add some marks to add a few last details.

You can go on and add more. Now, the fun of the print is always in the lifting off of the paper because you're never quite sure what you've got until that point. Okay, so let's see how that is coming out.

Obviously, with a print like this, it's going to be the reverse of what you're drawing so you must remember that from the start. Okay, so if you lift it off, there you have a monoprint.