Sunday, December 14, 2014

Over-painting a Mono Print with Watercolour

On Friday after being away from painting for a bit, I found the need to warm up so I pulled out a mono print from my stack of watercolour papers and started adding watercolour paint. The printing of the original botanical print, in brown, was printed using acrylic paint. That layer then stays adhered to the paper and watercolour paint can be added at will. Because the acrylic paint was thinned with mat medium and was in a thin layer, the second layer with the watercolour paint seemed to adhere on top of it well.



For information on making the botanical mono print below, click here .

Mono printing with a Gelli Plate onto hard press 90 lb watercolour paper using acrylic paint as the print medium. This is the mono print I used.
If you would like to see gelli plate monoprinting onto fabric, click here .

I enjoyed the mixed media play time using a mono print to paint on with watercolour. Again, the Gelli Plate mono prints was made with acrylic as the printing medium. Glazing medium thinned the acrylic paint.

The pros I found were:
  • the first layer stayed put
  • lots of texture could easily be achieved with the monoprint
  • it was fun to negative paint around this texture and create new shapes

The cons I found were:
  • the piece was rather dark and I had no way of lightening it up without adding additional mediums such as gauche or acrylic paint
  • I had to work within the composition of the mono print

Here are sections of the over-painted mono print. I am in love with the texture on the leaves that were printed and the leaves that I created through negative painting. Little things like this can excite a painter well at least it does me.



The whole piece in its entirety. Note the glazing of cerulean blue across the top to suggest leaves in the background. There are likely lots of applications for this technique. What can you think up?
 

3 comments:

Win Dinn, Artist said...

You're having too much fun getting back into your painting, Eileen - good on you! Love the combinations of neutral colours, watercolour, acrylics and Gelli printing!

HollyM said...

I I love it! I would be giddy over all those background and leaf textures too. I'd like to try this if I can remember it. I really like the dark brown negative painting. You can still see the texture and it makes the lighter leaves pop. I also like that you left some lighter areas in the leaves as opposed to colouring the whole thing.

Laura Leeder said...

It turned out wonderfully Eileen! So much texture and depth.