Monoprint workshop Day 2

The last day of Beth Fein's Akua color monoprint/monotype workshop at the Kala Institute in Berkeley was a few weeks ago but I dove back into the September work schedule so couldn't update the blog.

I forgot my camera so I'll keep it brief. She demonstrated some viscosity resists/monotypes--changing the viscosity using various color modifiers to have the thinner colors resist the heavier for some spontaneous, mostly uncontrollable effects.

Rather interesting but a bit too uncontrolled for me. I'm big on control.
But we also worked on some Chine Colle'; using stencils to block out portions of color and by using decent thin washi or japanese papers using these now colored papers to go back in to add to the print in multiple layers.

Here's what I managed to get out during the day's session. The dark "froot loop cascade" is a fairly straight forward monotype with rolled color underneath, then painted color in the next layer. The circles were stencilled out and then using the cleaned plate painted in again using bright colors and a brush. All in all there are probably 4-5 layers/passes through the press.
The ghost had the various layers run through after the darker version. But in this case I used the cut out stencil circles accumulated during the days printings glued back in the ghost base using wheat paste and the press. I like the chine colle' pale version better but the brush strokes on the dark one are lively and appealing--if a bit childish.

The last two were sort of "I'm getting tired and making lots of mistakes" but the mushroom cloud stencil thingy is sort of interesting and looks like if I push it a little bit might make a finished piece... I just don't know what yet. And the expanding cross/talisman will go through the press another 4-5 times before I decide if I should keep it or just throw it out.

I had fun. Have a nice base now from which to start experimenting at home and will see what I can come up with on Big Blue.
Mostly I wanted an alternative to the slow, carefully planned woodblock prints that are my main focus and these monotypes allow me to get into the studio and play with some ideas and colors in a way that's more direct and spontaneous and will allow me to flesh out some ideas before I decide if they're interesting enough to try in a multiblock woodblock print.