Life In The Arts
Monotypes with Tracey Adams
Wednesday, January 17, 2001 - 10:30 - 11:30 AM
LONGTIMERS PRODUCTIONS AND THE MONTEREY COUNTY OFFICE OF EDUCATION PRESENT
LEARN HOW TO DO A MONOTYPE PRINT, WITHOUT THE USE OF A PRESS.
Guest Artist Tracey Adams together with television personality and series host Maia Carroll, will introduce your students to the techniques of print making.
PROGRAM GUEST
Tracey Adams, is a local artist who will be introducing students to a monotype printing process without the use of a press. Tracey is a problem solver and a mathematician of the visual, she studies and organizes forms and images to uncover the patterns of their interrelationship. As an observer of nature and the landscape, Tracey employs both abtraction and the representational, paradoxically combining two seemingly mutually exclusive approaches to present the fundamental common character of nature's infinitely diverse manifestations.
Tracey's monotypes, etchings, lithographs and drawings and recycle and combine portions of them until Tracey finds a sense of order and resonance, adding paint, encaustic or another media to the surface during the process.
The resulting intimate landscapes and still lifes reflects Tracey's vision of nature's profound work and the world in which we live, where relationships continue to overlap and integrate on the continuum of time.
MATERIALS
All materials can be ordered through NASCO (800.558.9595). Look around and
see how many of these materials you can find before ordering (paper,
pencils, pens, mixing knife).
Paper -- any kind may be used, either white or colored, cut a little larger than the styrofoam plate used for printing so that there will be a whiteborder around the print. If the plates are cut to 4 1/2" x 6" the paper will need to be a bit larger. We also use paper for "practice drawing" of images to be drawn on the plate.
Pencils, pens -- needed to draw the image onto the styrafoam plate. Make sure the tip is not sharp.
Palette knife or something to mix the Speedball inks if you want to make different colors.
Pie tins or something flat/hard to mix the inks on.
Speedball inks -- these are water-soluble and you can buy as many different colors as you like. If you are on a strict budget, make sure you have at least red, yellow, blue, white, and black. Other colors can be mixed from these. Buy tube size according to class size.
Brayer -- these are the rollers used to roll the ink on to the styrafoam plate. You'll need at least 2, so you don't have to keep washing them off.
Buy the NASCO economy rubber brayers as they will last longer than foam.
Scratch-Foam Board -- buy a package of 9" x 12" scratch-foam and cut them into 4 equal pieces. If you buy a package of 12, you'll end up with 48 pieces which allows children to make several plates or allows several classes to try this project.
This project can be done for approximately $25. if you don't have any of the materials. There will be materials left over so another class can use them or you can re-use the materials. Everything can be found on pages 280 - 287 of the NASCO catalogue.
The Project
Practice drawing an image on paper to fit within the 4 1/2" x 6" styrafoam plate. Make sure your image is large and not too small. Don't focus on too many details as you can always add them afterwards. If you can't think of anything to draw, look at some magazines, or draw something from nature, like a leaf or tree.
After you have done a practice drawing on paper. Draw that image on your scratch-foam with a dull pencil or ballpoint pen. Go over the image a few times so that it is deeply pressed into the scratchfoam. Remember that whatever you draw will print in reverse so if you want to use words, practice drawing the letters backwards.
Once you've made your drawing on the scratch-foam, you'll ink your plate with any color you choose. Run the brayer (roller) over your plate until it is covered with ink. Don't ink it too heavily or it will blob your image.
Lay a piece of paper that is a little larger than your plate over the plate and rub evenly over it with your fingers. That will transfer the ink to the paper. If you want to make several prints in different colors, work from a lighter color to a darker color as the darker color will show through the lighter color and make it appear muddy.
Another Project (if we have time, we'll do a bit of this)
Practice mixing colors together. If we mix red and yellow, we get orange;red and blue, we get violet, yellow and blue, we get green. If we add white to any color, we get a lighter "tint" of the color like when we add white to red (pink). If we add a tiny amount of black to any color we get a darker "shade" like when we add black to red, we get burgundy. We can add different amounts of any of these colors and get very different results. Apply this practice to inking your plates.
READING LIST
Ayers, Julia, Printmaking
Ayers, Julia, Monotype
Links
http://www.artswire.org/kenroar/lessons/elem/elem21.html
http://spectacle.berkeley.edu/~fiorillo/7making_prints.html
FOCUS QUESTIONS
1. What images will work best for this project?
2. How do you go about thinking "in reverse" when drawing an image?
3. What colors work best when mixed together then printed over the existing plate?
CAREER CORNER
ARTIST
ILLUSTRATOR
CARTOONIST
DESIGNER