Monotype printmaking - collecting and making of unique artwork

Monotypes are rare and special
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Many famous artists used the monotype technique. Edgar Degas, the french impressionist is one of the most popular examples apart from Matisse and Gauguin. However for most of those artists monotyping was a side work with special character.

Again Degas gives an interesting example. His monotypes of boudoir scenes, studies made on the side paths of social life in Paris, were unknown for a long time. After his death they were discovered by his family and partly destroyed as improper. However Picasso had been a keen collector of these works and in his late years even published a famous series of etchings paraphrasing the work of Degas.

Good monotypes are not easy to find as the results in monotyping depend on developed skill,not only in managing form and color,but also the very unique handling of materials.My own search told me whenever you find a good monotype printer, you have found a very special artist with an original,ingenous body of work

Monotypes are a good buy
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Monotypes are unique works and therefore very close to a hand drawing or a painting. Nevertheless very often monotypes are a much better buy for collectors in comparison to traditional paintings for example. The reason for this is that monotypes are mostly classified as prints,shown and marketed in this environment and last not least the artists are mostly printers and active in other forms of printmaking. As a result the prices for monotypes are more than often strongly influenced by the price regime of artis prints with multiple editions (up to 200 copies per print for example). In other words, interested and informed collectors can find unique and outstanding works at very attractive prices just using this special condition on the art market.

1.Colors
My favorite colours for monotypes are oil colours which are also used for "normal" painting. I do not use water soluble colours as the paper I print on will not stay flat after getting in touch with water.
Usually I apply thin layers of colours to avoid that the print is looking like a squeezed oil painting. Oil colors stay reactive for a long time so I can work and shape the color layer for hours if I want. I often use Sennelier oil sticks in combination with standard oil colors.

2. Thinners
I like transparent color layers which I used to achieve by thinning the oil color with balsam turpentine oil. I stopped that because I was concerned about my health condition, even though I had a respiration mask. Today I use this solvent only in rare exceptions and for cleaning my brushes at the end of the process.
I have switched to linseed oil as thinner to get very thin transparent layers. The advantage of linseed oil is apart from not being poisonous that the thin layers do not dry as quickly as before and they do not loose shape that easy. I use only very little amounts of oil to avoid bleeding of the oil into the paper.
For cleaning the plate I use a salad oil.

3.Some Tools
I mainly use bristle brushes to put the color onto the glass plate. I manipulate the colors also with tissue paper to achive thin layers.

To apply pressure I rub the backside of the paper with a heavy brass pestel after I have placed the paper on the glass plate with the color layer.

4. glass plate
I bought the glass plate at the local window manufacturer. It´s a special glass that does not break as easy as the cheapest qualities. The thickness of the plate is 1 centimeter, little less than half an inch. I am working now on the same plate for more than 2 years.

Over a couple of years I have used traditional oil paint solvents like rectified balsam turpentine oil as thinners. I used the thinner to get thin washes of colors on the glass printing plate. However on the long term these thinners produced on basis of tree resins are harmful for your health.

After some search I found an alternative and today I don`t use any material that is signed "Xn". my favorite thinner is now bleached poppy oil. This is an almost water clear oil. The amounts I use to get thin layers are tiny compared to what I used before. Only a few drops and a minimum of color is enough to get the wanted result. Sometimes the layer is hardly visible on the glassplate,but the printing effect is still strong.
The Sky with clouds in the image below was added as final stage of a recent monotype print. I manipulated the thin layer with some tissue paper, working form "darkfield", to get the clouds. The advantage of oil as thinner is that the layer can be manipulated a long time, as the oil doesn`t dry as quickly as solvents do. Therefore you can control and correct your image much better.

The "ghost" are those traces of clor which are left on the printing plate after the color was transferred to the paper. Glass is very suitable for handprinting as the oil color can´t stick to much to the glass surface. However there are always traces left which are very helpful as orientation during the development of a print in several stages.


The image above shows the ghost of one of my monotype prints from the Piranesi Paraphrases. The first layer was the sky. In the next step I added in a blue wash the major forms and shadows of the building. Then I started to add details step by step in black and brown. One can see the traces of each step on the plate. So I can always see which areas I have worked on. The next image shows the unfinished print it corresponds with the state of the ghost image above.

It is possible to work out very fine details and to achieve a wide range of tonalities by manipulating the color in layers.

The image on the left shows a montype print with the basic color shapes and tonalities. The oil color was painted with a brush on the glas plate. Each colour was added in a separate step. I left the print in that stage over night for some drying,because I wanted to add linear work in black color for the details and additional tonalities.I cleaned the glass plate so no ghost was left.

In order to find the right registration I traced the main forms on a ransparent paper which I put underneath the glassplate. Thus I could see where the position of the column and the other buildings were.
I started drawing the details of the column with an oilstick and worked through the whole image in numerous steps. At last I inserted the sitting figure.

Provence - Arles - St.Trophime by editionha
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