Monoprinting with Inktense

Beverly Claridge
August 14, 2023
52 in 52, Creating Art Around Life
Red Playground Extreme

intensified paper pretreatment

Monoprinting with Inktense on the roughest paper yet has produced my favourite abstract works so far!

I revved up the intensity of pretreating the papers for Red Playground 1, 2 and 3, by wadding up the paper, then soaking, staining, and marking with Inktense. They are the most dimensional yet!!! But first, I flattened them with my heated plate press. The paper ended lovely and crunchy, so it was perfect for this set of works. I looked forward to solving the problems that would arise from mono printing on the crunchy paper because I’d discovered that working through problems increases my creativity.

Click here to read “Creating on Really Rough Paper: The 4 Problems I Solved”.

The Inspiring works

Problems with transferring Inktense

From the outset I had trouble with monoprinting the red inktense design using cardboard plates. To get the strength I wanted I cold-pressed it several times.

Next, the yellow Inktense monoprint offered very little contrast on the paper despite cold pressing the sheets many times.

Consequently, I made a stronger solution of yellow.

Further problems were resolved, in part, from discovering two rollers; one specifically for ink printing and the other I’d previously used for rolling clay. Both were perfect for transferring the ink from the card to the crunchy paper.

Contrast created when I added the blue Inktense to the composition showed itself rather quickly and I was delighted with the outcome.

Wonderful Caran D'ache

Next, out came my Caran D’ache crayons. I LOVE these crayons. Highly pigmented, they go onto most paper rather easily without leaving the debris often left by ordinary crayons. The difficulty I experienced from monoprinting with Inktense forewarned me that the crayon mark making would be a real challenge as well. Nevertheless, I felt the outcome would be interesting and, I’d would learn a thing or two.

The crunchy paper support forbade tender treatment. Several times I literally struck the surface with the crayon to make marks on the paper, as I skipped over the ridges in the paper.

Click here to read, “Three Important Creative Truths”, where I talk about the importance of solving problems and the roll it plays in creativity.

Wonderful Caran D'ache

I’m really pleased with these works because they broke well outside the bounds of what I normally made. They certainly stand apart next to my small collection of earlier abstracts. Click here to see those.