The weather was kind to us again! ( Last time's workshop, the first one was during warm weather too).
Monoprinting is, as far as I can see, the easiest form of printing. Basically you have a blank canvas, this time I had rolled out slabs of earthenware clay and poured a white or black slip over to produce the 'canvas'. This was leather hard when used and sheets of blank newsprint paper were covered in the areas needed to print from, with a coloured slip. As this was done in my studio, I have pastel colours of slip, which are thicker than the pouring slips and look nice together, and great on a black background ( with honey glaze).
For my demo, I traced with the newsprint, which was obligingly semi transparent, one of my sketches. I could either use my originals or the acetates for this purpose.
Once I had traced the image, I painted the thick (pastel) slip onto the relevant areas and put to dry (outside ) until the sheen had just gone off the slip. Then put the newsprint slip side down on the clay slab and traced over my sketch with the back of a thin brush. This could be done with anything non sharp.
With the Sumatran Tiger, I used two colours, chocolate brown and orange. With the print below I traced the tiger out using a newsprint of chocolate brown slip, then got a fresh piece of paper with orange slip and transposed a few lines over the tiger using a plastic fork on the back of the newsprint as well as a wooden clay tool for lines. This was the result...
The sheet of orange newsprint was rollered roughly over the clay canvas. The discarded newsprint with the chocolate brown slip was then rollered over it to produce a negative!
These two sheets with the Canadian Lynx were playing with shapes and colours with objects rolled into the clay on top of different coloured sheets. The interesting circles were made by rollering in a bead necklace. You could do this with seaweed as well!
On this one I used another traditional slipware technique of slip trailing on top, whereby liquid slip is squeezed from a bottle or pipette with a nozzle to produce a line. Its quite a skilled process to get a good result. Underneath was a the negative of the Lynx in tan slip. Maybe less should have been more!
I went to the Northern Potters' Camp last year, where the demonstrators were Michaela Schoop and Doug Fitch and Hannah McAndrew. Hannah was particularly skilled at sliptrailing on the large platters which Doug had made.
This platter is wood fired, hence the lovely dark colour. I think this platter could be using a black clay, though a deep honey glaze on a red earthenware could have the same appearance.
Hannah says she applies the slip trail to the surface of the pot while it is wet and glistening. I always used to leave mine till leather hard, note to myself, wet next time!
This is one of my own early plates. We went on a family holiday to Mondsee, Austria. We stayed at an apartment above a stables, which housed a pair of haflinger horses who pulled a cart for weddings and funerals in the town. I realise this has a firing crack in it, but it is still a favorite of mine!
This plate uses another traditional (slipware) technique, sgraffito. In this the top layer of leather hard slip (or some people use underglazes) is scratched or carved away. I have written about this more fully in my Reflective Journal. This drawing of a cat is scratched through a layer of leather hard white slip to a layer of black slip underneath.
With both of these plates a honey glaze was used. Made at Mike and Vicky Eden's Workshop.
Some of my results of the monoprinting workshop have been fired...
As you can see, they are glazed slightly differently. Above ( the positive image ) is honey glazed, whereas the bottom piece is using the negative ( used positive sheet applied all over with a roller ) and a clear lead bisilicate glaze. This one broke in two in the glaze firing, so has been joined together using kintsugi ( mentioned in more detail in a later post ).
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