Monoprinting

A brief history of mono-printing and some technical information.


** Psst! If you don't have a brayer go to the hardware store and grab the cheapest foam paint roller that you can find (a small one), it will work just fine!**

Free and Easy Mono-printing Methods

1. Plastic Bag Printmaking with Alisa Burke:
VIDEO https://vimeo.com/79070572

2. Mono-printing with recycling. Any smooth, non-porous surface can be used as a mono-printing plate. Things I have used include: plastic packaging from stamp sets, plexiglass,a glass cutting board, glass from a photo frame* and a non-stick craft mat. This video demonstrates the basic principle, and suggests other surfaces that are suitable:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSlIP9MQ1hk 

 

People have used this technique for hundreds of years, with printing plates made from wood, stone, tile, glass, ceramic, marble, and metal. Have a look around your house and garage and see what you can find that might work.

*Safety First: Leave the glass from a photo frame as a last resort, PLEASE. To make it as safe as possible, use masking tape on the edges and place an X from corner to corner on the non-printing side. Make sure the surface the glass is on is flat, with no humps or dips. There is always a chance that the glass will crack and cut you. 

Gelatin Printing Plates

Because of the soft surface, a gelatin printing plate can pick up more details than a rigid surface like plexiglass. This makes it perfect to use your stencils on. You can make one very inexpensively and kids really love it as well.

Basic Gelatin Plate and How To Use:

 Gelatin & Glycerin Plate: The Hectograph

Download a full PDF with the recipes, instructions for making and storing from the Files section of the Facebook Group.

The Buy-rather-than-DIY Option: A Gelli Arts Plate

PROS:

• Permanent and Stable
• Stores at room temperature, no risk of molding
• Durable, won't wear out
• Both sides are perfectly smooth

CONS

• Can be expensive and hard to get outside of America (I paid $70AU for an 8x10 plate approximately 18 months ago. This plate retails for about $30 in the US)
• Can't be melted down and re-poured if accidentally damaged

The Gelli Arts YouTube Channel is a goldmine of ideas and techniques, no matter what you use to mono-print.

Lots more mono-printing tutorials are saved in this You Tube playlist: 

One last video that demonstrates the enormous potential in a mono-print series made with paper masks:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaO2Ylye6tc

My Art Journal Covers

This is a few of my art journals. I work in many different books as well as on loose paper. I am showing these ones to show the variety in their covers.

I use the envelope journal as a kind of keepsake diary, so I want to be able to take it with me if I go away to put ephemera and memorabilia in. I made the cover as simple as possible so it would go in a bag easily. Here is a great Coptic Stitch tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue52htX3j0k

Here is the tutorial I based the above book on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyV5RA61tZw
 

 Here is the tutorial I based the above book on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EKHEWxm2Nw

The future of Journal Journey

I am home with a sick child, and the forced break from normal has allowed me to think about where we go from here? I more specifically, Where do I take us from here?
When Journal Journey was born there were three of us to share the load, create lessons and participate in the Facebook group chat. Life being what it is, my fellow Guides had to prioritise health, family and paid work. Now I find myself in the same dilemma.
Returning to full time work was supposed to be a temporary change, but another opportunity has presented itself and I am very excited to be taking on a new challenge in my job. I simply no longer have the time to put together the lessons as they have been.
I am not giving up on Journal Journey! I just want to have more time to participate in the Facebook group because all of you are the reason I enjoy it. So I am not going to be doing the PDFs, I won’t be doing my monthly lesson any more, and the lessons will be considerably shorter.
My new plan is this:

• Every weekend I will post one technique video and one page prompt.
• That post will be pinned to the top of the Facebook group for the week.
• I am encouraging you all to share the Art Journal resources that you are enjoying! Videos, blog posts, tip and tricks, post them all.

This way I can spend some of my weekend PARTICIPATING in the Journey, rather than just writing blog posts. Truthfully, I haven’t Journalled in over a month now, and I MISS IT. This is the reason you haven’t seen anything from me, I haven’t created anything. 
Thanks for understanding! Big hugs...
Jodi.

July Week One and Two: Journal Covers

Halfway through our Journey, and time to turn our attention to the outside of our journals. There are some things that you should consider when planning what to put on your journal covers.

The raw material: What are the covers made of?

MDF (medium density fibreboard) or plywood panels

Give MDF two light coats of gesso to seal the wood. If any moisture gets into MDF it swells and disintegrates. Other than that, you can do almost anything with a wood base because it’s sturdy and inflexible.

Chipboard

Want to recycle? Chipboard sheets from the back of sketchbooks make great covers. Or you can cut cereal box card to the size you need and glue them together. Use a good thick PVA glue (e.g., wood glue) or a gel medium and weight them overnight under some large books or a pile of magazines. This prevents any buckling and ensures a good adhesion. I would suggest having at least six or seven layers of cereal box card glued together to make a cover heavy enough to take some texture and paint. Binding the edges with masking tape helps make the cover more hard wearing, and be sure to give raw chipboard two light coats of gesso before adding paint.

3-Ring Binders:

You can also use a normal 3-ring binder as an art journal. If it has a shiny finish use some light sandpaper to rough it up a bit before adding two light coats of gesso to prepare the surface for paint.

Colour and texture

Do you like the feel and look of fabric? What about a shiny, glass-like effect? Maybe rough and sandy are more you. All of these textures can be used on the outside of a journal.
Do you want to keep your journal on a shelf with other books? Keep the dimensional effects flat so the decorations don’t get caught on other books on the shelf. Want to go all out with embellishments but not sure how to store or display your journal? I use a decorative easel :

How is your journal bound?

If you are working on loose pages and want to bind them all together into a book, you can use hinged rings, a DIY-binding system (e.g., the Zutter Bind-It-All or the Cinch). You will have to take the holes in the covers into account when planning what you will put on them.
Here is my Pinterest Board devoted to the covers of art journals. Have a look to get some ideas about what you like and don’t like:

Videos:

 Mixed Media Art Journal Cover using Die Cuts and Texture Paste: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io8y1iNrLcI

Placing a Stamped Image onto a Textured Substrate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-5XrE3tX8E

Ring Binder Art Journal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzmpWqQj8Vw

Creating Texture with Tissue Paper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDaasjYr1LU

Using Hot Glue to Create a Textured Design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmniDSZcmuw

The Magic of Gesso: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el5PThtFdnE

Masking Tape to Create Texture and Making a Small Journal with a Very Simple Binding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DMwvjyQ9w0

Spiral Bound Journal Cover (flat texture): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1RwFn420G8

Fabric Journal Cover #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkrhOkKv2QU

Donna Downey Style Art Journal with a Fabric Cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zvPsL0Y-90

This is a how to make a journal from scratch tutorial. She makes some mistakes during the making of and leaves it in to demonstrate what not to do and why, but also to show that mistakes are not the end of the world or your project, you can work around it when things go wrong!

June Week Two : Stencils & Masks

Stencils and masks are one of my most loved tools. They are currently very fashionable in the art and craft world so there are as many designs as you can imagine available commercially. For the die-hard DIY'er, there is nothing more satisfying than cutting your own unique stencil, either from Mylar, overhead transparency or recycled plastic packaging.  
Many of the stencils I use regularly came straight from the recycle bin

Let’s start with how to make our own Stencils and Masks:

Lindsay the Frugal Crafter shows how to use Hot Glue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbLcxJ0RYQQ

Recycled Rubbish stencils from Jennibellie:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIe60rAf-3g

 

Julie Fei-Fan Balzer shares seven different ways to repurpose trash into tools and includes how to make a silhouette mask:

Want ideas on different ways to use these tools? They can be used with just about every medium you have! To demonstrate the versatility, here are three videos, all by Joggles:

12 Stencil Techniques

Techniques with Stencils

 

More Stencil Techniques!

I hope you have fun trying out some of these techniques

June Week One: Doodles

Let's incorporate animals into our pages this month. A portrait of your furry, feathery or finned friend; your spirit animal; mythical monsters, they are all possibilities to kickstart a great page.

Doodling, Zentangle and Mandala

A little doodling can go a long way. It is art journalling stripped down to the bare bones: a black pen and a piece of paper. It can be added as detail to a page, or stand on its own as the entire design. Think of a simple hand drawn page border or an entire page of detailed patterns. 

Like everything, the most stunning and intricate designs represent hours and hours of practice. It is harder than it first seems, but practiced regularly (the key to it all) it is easy to master. 

Tools

I have found that most people who practice the art of Doodling in its many forms agree on two things. The best tools are:

1. Smooth paper
2. A black pen with a fine tip. Micron pens are by far the most popular, but use what you have.

I am going to be using a spiral bound Visual Diary/Sketch book with 110gsm paper (I think the brand is Canson) and a Stabilo felt tipped "fineliner" pen to practice my doodling.


If you are adding doodling over the top of acrylic paint, you will need to use a paint pen. DO NOT use a Copic, Sharpie or other permanent marker, the solvent or alcohol will reactivate the acrylic paint, clog the marker and make it unusable.Not a good feeling to ruin a brand new pen that cost $5.

Doodling

In Art Journalling, doodling can be spontaneous mark making, used to add detail and definition to a page, or deliberate patterns combined to create texture, or fill a space. The official Wiki definition is:

A doodle is a drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be abstract shapes.

  

About Zentangle®

Zentangle ® is a brand (a Registered Trademark) that has become synonymous with doodling. 
All Zentangles are doodles, but not all doodles are Zentangles.
Definition from WikiHow:

 A Zentangle is an abstract drawing created using repetitive patterns according to the trademarked Zentangle Method.

The method applies the principles of meditation and mindfulness to drawing designs on a 3.5" square of paper. There are many books available on this particular style of doodling.

Mandala

Mandala (Sanskrit: मण्डल) means 'circle' in the Sanskrit language, and mandala art refers to symbols that are drawn, sketched or painted in a circular frame.

Whatever you want to call your drawings, a good idea is to create a simple reference sheet of marks and patterns that you can browse when your brain doesn't want to cooperate. Here are some ideas:

May Week Three

Last we took a look at watercolour (or water soluble) mediums. A word that you might see on product packaging is “Aquarelle” or “Aquarellable” which will tell you that it works with water.
Because I used them in my page this week, I just want to take a second to talk about Gel Pastels. Faber Castell have a well known product called Gelatos, which come in lots of yummy colours and can be diluted or activated with water, or used straight from the tube. Gelatos are great, but while they are really easy to get in the USA, some of us in other parts of the world have trouble getting them, and they are often expensive. If you want to try Gelatos, but can’t get them or can’t afford them, I suggest you check out the kids art section in big department stores and look for Crayola's Slick Stix, or any other product that says Gel Pastels or silky smooth pastels. All the ones I have found come in some kind of twisting, lipstick-style form. They will come in a limited palette of primary and secondary colours, but you can play with them and decide if you love them enough to invest the time, effort and money into getting the more gorgeous (and trendy) Gelato colours.

https://youtu.be/r915L4N5vL4

 

I drew the bird onto the foam from an image I found on Pinterest. I like this technique of stamp making, it reminds me of the lino-printing I did in high school art, but without the risk of injury from the sharp cutting tools. I think I will probably end up adding a little something to the bird stamp on the page, but I haven’t worked out what he needs yet. I don’t want to lose any of the translucence of the stamp, I love that I can see the background colours through the stamped image. 

Thank you to Jo Hardstaff and Maria Bozikis for the inspiration for the chevron stamp. It's my new favourite :)

The wording is what I decided I would do if I ruled the world. For me, joy comes from gratitude and is the perfect antidote to hate and jealousy. 

I'd probably give everyone a magic packet of Tim Tams as well, because arting requires energy:

And here is the best way to eat a Tim Tam (trust me):

 It's called the Tim Tam Slam. Aussie's get it.

Happy Arting!