What’s a Monotype?
A monotype is actually a printed painting. You put your ink down on your plate, place your paper against it, print it using a press or rolling pins, and then wipe the plate clean and do another painting. It’s possible to pull a second ‘ghost’ print off the plate as well. Sometimes these work well as is. They can be used as a base layer that you can add to. The main thing is that no two prints are alike and you can’t pull an edition like you can with standard printing techniques like etching.
All of my monotypes were done using Charbonnel etching inks mixed with Dorland’s Wax Medium to extend drying time. Nearly all of my work was done on Arches watercolor paper. I’d soak the sheets for thirty minutes or more and then blot them dry when I was ready to print.
I worked with a flat bed printing press. I also worked some of my monotypes later, when dry, with pastels. I always used and preferred copper plates for my painting surface.
Monotype Technique :
Monotypes are one-of-a-kind prints made by transferring an image from a non-absorbent surface like metal, glass, or plastic to paper. They can be black and white or color and made in single or multiple printings. They can be hand colored afterward and worked with in many ways. Degas often completed his monotypes with lush pastel work.
There are two basic approaches to making a monotype :
Subtractive : select metal, glass, or plastic to suit your need as a plate to paint on. With a large rubber roller lay down an even, opaque layer of ink or paint. Now manipulate the paint layer by subtracting with rags, brushes, or your fingers. You can dip the brushes or rags in solvent or use them dry to create varying tones and whites. Linear effects can be made with the ends of brushes, pencils, or anything else you find at hand like palette knives, sponges, rubber, or carton edges. Use anything that will remove or ’subtract’ the ink as your image dictates.
Additive : begin with a clean plate. Just paint on the plate with your oil paints. Oil based paint stay wet for along while so you can take more time to work. It’s possible to make monotypes using watercolors as well.
Mixed methods : The subtractive and additive methods can be combined. Roll out your even layer of ink on the plate. Subtract for the lights and add color as called for. Print in one pass or several. If printing by hand you can draw on the back of your paper when it’s flat against the plate and your drawing will record on the front. Wooden spoons, rollers, dough pins, door knobs and other flat objects make good printing tools.
Historical Outline :
Monotypes originated in the 17th century as a means of producing continuous tone on etching plates. Rembrandt and Giovanni Castiglione painted directly on the surface of their copper plates to create tonal effects otherwise unobtainable. Rembrandt went on to hand-color may of his etchings. Castiglione pursued surface inking and produced some of the first known monotypes.
Few artists worked with monotypes until the 18th century and William Blake. This was due partly to the insularity of printmaking. Monotypes are a painterly rather than graphic technique and have been, in the past, most successfully worked by painters. This however is changing.
Etching had become a means of multiplication and its artistic characteristics sublimated. Through a renewed study of Rembrandt’s work, varied and colored etchings, tonal changes from proof to proof, a new approach to etching developed which tied it more closely to painting. Simultaneously with the Barbizon school and its interest in nature’s ‘chiaroscuro’ the mid 19th century saw etchings revival.
Degas made several hundred monotypes. Underlying these ‘printed drawings’ was the renewed interest in the expressive individual inking of plates. Degas was attracted to the medium by Vicomte Ludovic Lepic, a talented amateur, who exclaimed : “I claim authorship for ‘variable etching’, that is, for the labor of art that permits us to break with common practices and obtain such results with the liberty of ink and rag.” Degas first worked with the subtractive method, then the additive, and finally a unique combination of these and other media. Degas also introduced Pissarro and Cassatt to monotypes.
19th century preeminent practitioners of monotypes in europe were Degas, Pissarro, and Gauguin ; in the United States it was Duveneck, Chase, Walker, and Prendergast and the other artists of the ‘Eight’.
Monotypes were popular in the United States for their novelty and because they allowed for a display of bravura painting techniques. Duveneck and Chase brought the technique home from their studies in Europe. The ‘Eight’, Sloan, Prendergast, Lawson, Davies, Glackens, Luks, and Henri made important early 20th century monotypes.
Recently, such major artists as Motherwell, Gottlieb, Johns, Miro, Picasso, Dubuffet, Tobey, Francis, Rouault, Chagall, Mazur, Frank, Oliveira, Diebenkorn, Dine, Thiebaud, and Avery have integrated monotypes into their working processes creating imagery of great impact.
Many thanks to Ryna Segal, for her notes on monotypes and for being my teacher at the Pratt Graphics Center when it was still in New York City.