Transcripts
1. Introduction - Come on in...: Hi there, and welcome
to the land of Reductive Monotype,
your new printmaking passion! Printmaking is a
great way to begin exploring art or to expand
your current art practice. When I first started, I thought I needed to be in a fancy printmaking studio with special equipment just to
even begin exploring it. But no, no, no, no. There are printmaking methods
which can be done at home on your kitchen table with
only a few core tools. Reductive Monotype printmaking
may sound complicated, but it's actually really simple, and I want to show you just
how expressive it can be. Whatever level you think you're at. the good news is this
class is for you. If you are a total art newbie, you are welcome here! If you are an artist who has
never tried to printmaking, you're in the right place! So what is reductive monotype? An inky surface, minus some of the ink is
reductive monotype. In this class, you
will ink up a surface, remove some of the ink
to create a design, and then take a print from it. Along the way,
you'll be exploring the tonal values of your
artwork in a different way, giving you a fresh perspective when using other art mediums too. And you'll be discovering just how powerful
the marks you make, in the ink can be. The techniques you'll learn
in this class can be taken forward to support you in learning other
printmaking methods, such as trace monotype
or additive monotype. My name is Gemma and I will be your art buddy
through this class. I'm an artist maker
who enjoys far too many creative things and I love encouraging
others to try them too. Perhaps together, we can feed our creative souls and find
some fresh inspiration. In the next lesson,
we'll talk about the class project in a
little bit more detail. So let's get started.
2. What's the Project?: Our project is to create a
reductive monotype print. That's it. That's
all we need to do! It doesn't have to be on a particular subject -
if you like it can be joyfully abstract, simply exploring which kind of marks make which
kinds of results. However, if you feel at all inspired by some of
the class demos, feel free to create
your own forest, mountain or ocean scene. But if you feel pulled
in another direction, listened to that
friendly art voice inside your head and
see where it takes you. The basic process
will be to ink up a surface - to remove some of that ink in whichever way
you like to create a design - to press paper on top of it, take a print and see
what results you get. You will also find a step-by-step breakdown in
the resources section. So do print that out if
you need a little bit of backup during your
first experiments. Whatever your results,
I hope you'll take a photo of them and share
them in the project gallery. And if you'd like
any feedback on any of your prints, just ask. So often we all think our
artwork isn't good enough, but by sharing it, we can actually start
boosting our confidence. Your artwork is valuable, no matter where it's
bubbling up from. Whether it's a
learning curve, an experimental playground
or an intention. No matter what the outcome, the fact that you created it is something
worth celebrating. So, what materials do we need
for all this printmaking goodness? Well, I'm
glad you asked. Let's go find out
in the next lesson.
3. What Materials do we need?: You don't need a lot of materials for this
kind of printmaking, just a few core items. The most important
is that you'll need a shiny surface to work on. I use a piece of glass
from an old photo frame, but there are lots of options, so hunt around for
something that you might already have that
could be perfect. You'll be looking for
something which is smooth, shiny, and which ink can be
easily wiped clean from. Perhaps you have an
old tea tray that you could re-purpose as
your printing surface, or perhaps an old mirror. Maybe you have a really smooth
non-porous table surface which you could just
ink onto directly. Next, you'll need a roller, otherwise known as a brayer. Small beginners rollers like
this one are very affordable and can easily be found online or in art
and craft stores. If you get really stuck though, you could try using a
mini decorating roller. Just be aware that
it might leave extra texture in the ink which will show up
in your prints. But you never know, that
might be a really cool effect! You will of course,
need some ink. I have Essdee water-based
ink for our class demos, but you can choose
any colour you like. I like water-based inks for home printing just because
they're so easy to clean. But if you have oil-based
inks to use, then go ahead. Also have some little pieces of stiff card like this to hand, just so that you can
spread that ink easily. The last core item is paper. Oooh, paper! In our class demos, I'll be using a standard
white printer paper at around 100 GSM. But you can try
out whatever paper you have and see what
works best for you. The point is, you don't need any fancy paper here.
Outside of the core items all that's left to grab
are bits and bobs, which can help you
to remove the ink. In our demos, I'll be using
things like kitchen roll, brushes, skewers, bits of card, but there are no rules. So look around and see what
you can experiment with. And now you'll be
pleased to hear it is time to get rollin'. Let's go.
4. Rolling the Ink...weirdly calming!: I have my piece of glass
all clean, dry and ready. I'm sorry about the
reflections in the middle, but it's really difficult to film glass without them. However, once we start getting inking and
we have our paper, they shouldn't be too
much of a distraction. It's a good idea before
you start playing with the ink and you start
getting inky fingers, it's a really good idea
to get your paper ready that you're going to
print on. That way you can just have it to the side and as soon as you're
ready to print, you can grab a piece
and slap it on. I've just ripped my
paper up into A5 pieces and this was the only one
that was a bit of a casualty, but I'm going to use
that as my paper guide. The benefit of having
a transparent surface like this means that I can lift it up and slide a piece of
paper underneath, like so. Then I can just use that
as an easy guide to know how big the paper
is that I'm printing on - and therefore, only ink into that area and not waste any
other ink around the outside. Just before I jump
fully into the inking, I just want to explain
why I'm going to ink directly onto my surface
rather than use a tray. The more traditional and perhaps logical way of doing this is that you put your ink into a separate
tray such as this. You roll it out with your
roller in this tray. Once your roller
is nice and inky, you then take it and
roll onto your surface. This allows you to get a
nice neat area of ink, and it also allows you to
control how much ink you're putting on that
surface a little bit better. As I've been going along, trying out this type
of printmaking at home and exploring
the possibilities, I have found for me
personally that I just get better results by putting the ink directly
onto the surface. This is because it
simply allows for a slightly thicker
layer of ink to distribute across the
surface. In a studio, when you have the benefit
of a press to use, you can often get
better results by using thinner ink coverings. But when you don't
have a press to use, you're relying on how much
pressure you can exert by yourself. While the
method I'm using may not be as neat
as the tray method, I have found that the slightly thicker ink
means I can still get good prints without
so much pressure being needed at
the print stage. But I do encourage you
always to experiment yourself as you go and see
what methods suit you best. I'm placing a little
blob of ink onto the top corner of
my printing area. We really don't need very
much and it's always easier to add more ink on
if we don't have enough, rather than to take some
away if we've rolled it too thickly. Using a small
piece of stiff card, I'm gently scraping the blob of ink across the top of
the printing area. I'm aiming to create
an even strip of ink, which will effectively
become my roller's inkwell. Now, the rolling fun begins. I place my roller into
the inkwell we've just created and, keeping it in
contact with the surface, roll it back towards me so that it pulls the ink across
the printing area. When I reach the bottom
of the printing area, I lift up the roller
and replace it back into the inkwell to
repeat the roll again. On the first few pulls, the roller may not fully
roll and that's okay. We'll just keep going. Each time I lift the roller
between pulls at the start, I give it a little flick to
encourage the roller to spin. This helps to ensure
that every time the roller goes
into the inkwell, a fresh part of the
roller makes contact. The aim is to get a nice even coverage of
ink all over the roller. Bear in mind,
different rollers work at different speeds
and efficiencies. I'm using an inexpensive
roller here, and it can often start by
rolling a bit unevenly, but it always pulls
through in the end. The first roll in any
session takes the most time because we are loading
ink onto a clean roller. Any rolls we do after
the first one though, will have some ink already
loaded on the roller, and so will be speedier. Once ink starts to spread, we can move faster and
lift up the roller less, changing the
roller's direction sometimes to ensure we are covering all the corners
of the print area. This is where we can just enjoy the satisfying act
of rolling ink. I think it's weirdly calming. Let me know if you
agree! As you roll, listen out for this
type of noise. You hear that kind of sticky sound almost
like a gentle Velcro? That's a great indicator
that the ink is evening out and finding
its printing sweet spot. Once you feel happy
that you have created a flat,
inky surface, as even as you can get it without
being a perfectionist, then it's time to start
creating some designs. And that's exactly what we'll be doing in the next lesson. Let's go.
5. Removing Ink (Simple & Swishy!): We're going to start with some easy expressive techniques, which we don't need to
think about too hard, but which can create impactful
areas on our prints. This lesson is all about
utilsing broader, looser gestures to create an easy sense of
place or movement. I'm wrapping a piece of
kitchen towel around my hand, but you could also use a cloth. I rest my hand down next to the side edge of
the ink surface. Keeping it in contact
with the surface, I gently move my hand towards
the center of the ink, but lessen the pressure
as I go, so that we get this kind of streak effect. Then I do the same
from the other side. With this simple movement, we can create a sense
of still water. We can go back in to reinforce that streakiness
if we like, using light strokes of the cloth to pull the ink across the space, but don't get too
carried away just yet. If we repeat this
action too much, we'll end up taking
off too much ink and our final print
could be faint. So now we have a super
simple composition brewing, which is separated into two parts above and
below a horizon line, what I'm treating as a sky and the water. Holding the
cloth in a small ball, I use a dabbing motion
to create a sense of clouds in the sky. I
vary the pressure I use, pressing a
little harder on the outer edges and dabbing
lighter towards the middle in broad gestures. I then move to creating
a little loose detail. I wrap the cloth
around one finger and, holding my fingers
straight downwards, I use the tip of my fingernail to put in some highlights
on the water surface. As we move ink around, you'll see that if we accidentally make
too strong a mark, we can usually nudge
another bit of ink back to mute it a little. It's all about gently pushing and pulling your
composition into being. So try not to worry about moments which may
feel like mistakes. The final print
may surprise you. To narrow down a little further, I wrap the tip of a wooden
skewer into the cloth and use it like a pen to draw
in some tiny highlights. Old bristly brushes which would be rubbish for painting with - they can be very
useful in making loose textural marks in the ink. Brushing very lightly across
the ink may seem pointless, but it's amazing how these marks can show up on a
print. At this point, it's fair to say it doesn't look
like much has been done. And it's tempting to
want to keep removing ink so that you can see the design more
clearly on the plate. But - here is a warning not to fully trust what
you see before you. The print you'll get on the
paper will not look the same as what is
seemingly on your plate. For one thing, it will
be a reversed version. But also, the more whitespace there is, that you can see in the ink, the less ink there is to
create a clear print width. There are no real
rules to knowing exactly how a print
will turn out. It all depends on how
much ink was initially rolled out and how much pressure has been used in removing ink. Luckily, reductive monotype can be a speedy learning process. Trial and error and
practice are really the only ways to tell whether
a design is complete. So enjoy the
figuring out stages - roll some ink, make some marks, take a print and just see
what happens each time, refining it as you go. By
having a good few tries, you'll start honing
your gut instinct for when a design is ready, I'm using a damp cloth to tidy
up the edges of my design, and then it's time to print. I'm placing a piece of paper
straight down onto the ink. Then using the broad
flat of my hand, I'm creating an even
pressure across the paper. It's important to use even
pressure with a broad, flat hand rather than
localised pressure, say by using your fingertips. This is because any
localised pressure points will create marks of
their own in the print, which is fine if
that's your intention, but good to avoid if it's not. The Paper tends to
stick onto the ink so it shouldn't slide
around and blur. But to be on the safe side, I generally hold one
corner with a couple of fingers while my other hand
is moving around the paper. I don't press down hard, just firmly, and ensure all areas of the paper
gets some attention. Now it's time for the surprise. Pick up a corner of the
paper and peel it upwards. As you can see, there is quite
a lot of whitespace which shows just how much
ink we did actually remove. Those light brush
marks we made in the sky do show up and I think they add a nice texture
around the clouds. I really enjoyed the
contrast of textures between the straight lines
in the water and the soft swirlingness in the sky. A really simple composition, but there is still a
lot to see. Afterwards. we are left with the
last of the ink residue. All you need to do
to clean it up is to grab a damp cloth
and wipe it away. If you're using oil-based inks, you'll need a cloth
and a blob of sunflower oil to wipe
them away instead. Before we end this lesson, I'll share with you a different
version of this scene, which was made with black ink, so you can see how similar, but how different, prints with the
same compositions can be. With this one, I used
light brush marks on the water surface to
add more texture and a more graphic swirl in the sky using the brush and some
cardboard - and heads up, I'll be explaining more
about using cardboard on more graphic elements
in the next lesson. And here is the result. I think it looks kind of icy. I like the contrast of movement in this
one, with the water so still and the
clouds so dynamic. But I also like how they
still tie into each other, because similar marks
were used in both areas but to different effect. Simple compositions like this can be great for experimenting. Think about how you can vary
the two areas each time, maybe creating a more swirly sea and a more
structured sky next time. Remember, once
your prints a dry, take a good look at the
textures you've achieved. You'll find some pockets of
spontaneous genius in there. Okay, I'll be leaving
these wet prints to dry on a flat surface while we
move on to the next lesson.
6. Removing Ink (Bold & Contrasty!): In this lesson, we're
going to be playing with more intentional moves and creating stronger tones. As I'm rolling this straight after
the first inkling design, there is still wet ink on
my roller and so I can squeeze a little less ink
onto my plate this time. I'm also cleaning
up the edges first, this time to ensure I have a rough white border
around my design. I have two pieces of cardboard, one with a width slightly
thicker than the other. I'm going to be using these very simple tools
to create tree trunks. I hold an edge of the
card against the surface, at the bottom of my
inky plate area, and keeping it in
contact with the plate, I push it upwards
through the ink. I don't keep it super straight. I wiggle it, I angle it, sometimes pressing down harder
for a cleaner line and at others lifting slightly to
allow for some inky streaks. At the top, I lift
it up and there we have the basis for
our first tree trunk. You'll find there
is some excess ink now on the tip of the cardboard. This can be useful now to go
back into the design with. As you can see, some of
the trunk looks a bit streaky, in a way that maybe
isn't too tree-like yet. But by using the
cardboard, again, we can nudge it into
a better direction. I dab the tip of
the cardboard into the trunk at angles
and intervals, nudging the ink around the trunk loosely to messy
up its surface. I try to keep it looking a bit irregular because
trees aren't perfect. I absolutely love
this technique! It is so effective. And by using the angular
edge of the card, we can get such fun, jaggedy textures really quickly. Now I'm taking the narrower
piece of card and I'm going to do the same thing to
create more tree trunks, but these will be thinner. Remember, a clean
edge of card will remove more ink on
its first push and the highlights it
makes will be strong. But if too much ink comes away, you can always use the
excess you'll have collected on the card later to plop
some back in again. So here we have some pretty
fun painterly trees brewing. Now it's just a case of adding
more trunks if we like, and varying the composition
with other elements, such as streaks and lines
which can echo foliage. In the center, I'm
starting to map out some background trees by starting them up
a little higher. But I'm keeping
these further-away elements scribbly and loose, using the corner of the
card to draw freely with. I'm not doing anything
to the ink in-between the trees, apart from
some line drawing. I'm not trying to texturise it in any way because
in this composition, I want the trees to stand out. The trees themselves
are textured enough and I don't want
to distract from them. Because this
is a more graphic, bold and structured design, you can see that it's easier
to view it on the plate. We can see that in this print
we will have strong areas of white highlights and
deep areas of solid ink. Lovely! I'm using the long
side of my piece of card to push in some rough lines
which creates a pathway. It's interesting to have a little horizontal action in amongst all of this vertical. And now let's see
what we've got. I like it. This is what I
mean about the contrasts which can be achieved
when we start playing with some
bolder strokes. We can let the paper do the work to create the bright highlights and push pools of ink together to create
those deep shadows. As you can see, any
untouched ink between the trees still has a
texture all of its own. And the variety of
lines that we've made gives the eye
plenty to play with. So before we move on, let's see how this one
came out in the black ink. With this version, I mapped out all of the tree
positions roughly first and then went back in to add messy detail to each one. I like the slightly off-center
pathway in this one, and the chunk of untouched
space all around it. It provides a moment
of breathing room. There are some
lovely shadow lines on the edges of the trunks, and I love the scribbliness
of the foliage. For me, black ink really does have an impact,
all of its own, so I do encourage
you to play and to see what you enjoy using most. In the next lesson, we'll be playing with both the swishy, gentle techniques
from our first demo, combined with the more
structural additions that we've used here to
create a full scene. I hope you're as excited
as I am! Let's go.
7. Combining Techniques to explore Textures & Values: In this demo, we're
going to combine the techniques that we've
been learning so far, using broad sweeping motions
to create watery textures, alongside the more dynamic
pushing of ink to create contrasts in both textures
and values. Using a cloth, just like we did
in the first demo, I'm going to slide the
ink gently into a streak, but this time I'm
going upwards in a narrower diagonal direction. Then, keeping contact
with the plate, I move downwards diagonally with the wider part of my hand. I go back in gently with
the cloth to reaffirm that triangle shape and then create a similar but
smaller version beside it. Now I'm going to set
the water line, just like we did
in the first demo, moving my cloth from
the edge of the plate towards the center
with light pressure. Then I gently mark in some swirls in the
sky, not heavily, because at this point, I just want to find
my core shapes and to get an idea for where
this scene might go. So now we have three
main areas to play with. The watery foreground, the
mountainous background, and the cloudy sky. It's helpful to
make a mental note of these general areas within your design and to move between working on them
a little at a time. This is because if you work fully on one area all at once, It's easy to lose sight
of the scene as a whole. You don't want to find you have taken too much ink away in one area before you realise that another area cannot
find balance with it. I go back in with my cloth covered finger
to dab at the mountains, gently breaking up some of
the streaks and harder lines. I use the flat of my
finger for soft dabbing, but I can switch to the tip of my finger
nail for picking out any harder highlights on
the rock. With a ball of cloth I do a twisty-dab (yes, I am making that a technical
term!) on the foreground, which lifts off ink in soft chunks and aims
to echo a grassy verge. So now it's Tree time. I'm using the cardboard again, but in a slight variation. I push the thin edge, this time straight upwards
to create a line which will act as my tree
trunk and helps me mentally to position
where I'm going. Then starting at the
top of the line, I use the edge of the
card to push ink outwards and inwards from the
trunk to create branches. As I move downwards, I push out a bit wider. I use the excess ink on
the card to get back into the branches where too
much ink has been removed. I try to leave the
whitest highlights on the edges of the branches. Then I do the same, but going the other way from
the trunk line, though, I keep this side a
little bit narrower and I don't worry at
all if it's jaggedy. If you're ever not sure what to put into an area of a scene, especially for the background, just try some textural marks. You don't need to know
exactly what they are for them to have some
surprising effects. Here, I'm putting in
some inky dots in clusters just to see
how they come out, and to give that area
some different energy. I keep with the
card and use it for multiple details - to pop some
reflections on the water, to draw in grass stems at the front, to make rocky forms in the back
and the foreground, and to make the mountain edges
a little bit more jagged. I also decide to use
it on some areas of the sky simply as an echo
to what's going on below, to help balance out
the texture energies. It does look a bit weirder
and messier than I intended, but it will be fun to see how
it comes out in the print. So let's see these results. Not bad! The sky
is a bit wibbly, but I'm glad I did it as,
I think it does add a little bit
more movement up there, and the streaky lines echo the watery ones down below. The middle ground could
be better defined, but I'm really enjoying those mountain textures and the rocky areas are
really successful. So let's take a look at
the black ink version too. It's harder to see the mountains
on this plate's design, but this time I allowed
the trees to encroach more into the centre and I made less of a
feature of the water. Isn't it interesting how well the mountains
have come out? Because on the plate, it looked as if I had hardly
done much to them at all. But I think they have printed as a really strong presence whilst also not dominating the scene. This print feels
painterly and it's definitely one of my
favourite results. Before we end this lesson, I just want to remind you that when you finish a
printing session, do give you a roller
a good clean. No one wants dried ink crusting up their future
prints! And remember, home printmaking is
not about perfection, it's about play. It takes some trial
and error and a good few experiments
before you can start to guess at the
results that you'll achieve. And even then, you'll still be surprised at your creations more often than not! Reductive Monotype is a chance to
creatively freewheel, and I really hope you enjoy exploring it in your
own unique way. In the last lesson, we'll share some final thoughts
and wrap this all up. So I'll see you there.
8. You did it! Let's debrief...: Oh my gosh, we have
reached the debrief! The friendly catch
up chat at the end where we contemplate
what on earth just happened. Do you think you'll
be having a go at reductive monotype
printmaking in the future? Have you already
started trying it out? This class has been
all about exploring printmaking in a
looser, freer way, and I really hope it
inspires you to try it. If you do have a go, I would love to see
how you get on. If you'd like to
share your creations, the project gallery is
a great place to do so. If you have any questions - and no question is
a silly question - the Discussions tab
is open to you. Feel free to use it to get
more printmaking support, or just chat about
arty stuff in general. If you made it this far Thank you, and I would love it if you could leave a review. They really help me to
keep growing and improving, creating classes that
you want to see. And, they help my class get discovered by other
makers on Skillshare. If you would like to explore more printmaking methods such as Collagraph or
Drypoint, then do check out my
other Skillshare classes. And if you'd like to hear about any new classes on the way, then do hop over to my
Skillshare profile and give me a follow. Outside of Skillshare, you can find me at gemmathepen.com where I share artsy, crafty,
bloggy goodness. And over on Instagram
@gemmathepen where I share all my
latest arty experiments. Also, please do check out
my YouTube channel for regular free art
and craft videos which are only a
little bit silly. ...well, maybe a lot, but art should be enjoyable and that's
what we're aiming for! So it's only left to say Thank you so much for
taking this class. I really hope you
enjoyed it and that you discovered something
new to get obsessed by. Keep printmaking happy and I'll see you next time.
Gemma the Pen, Making to Make Happy!
