Last weekend we went to see an exhibition of Michael Simpson – selected drawings at the Holburne Museum in Bath. I always love seeing sketchbooks, preparatory drawings, unfinished paintings, as you get a glimpse of the way an artist works. His drawings were beautiful, on a variety of surfaces (paper, cardboard, found papers and even paper napkins) and in a variety of media – it’s definitely worth checking out the link above. His continuous revisiting of a limited number of themes, the inclusion of found text – this made me want to go back to revisit some of my monotypes to rework them and push them on (after all, it’s what we were encouraged to do on the Portfolio Course :0) ), I just needed a reminder to do it).
I took a couple of the monotypes and started by adding some found text and then printing a layer of paler coloured ink over the top:
The next day (should have left it longer really, as the ink wasn’t dry enough, but I was impatient), I worked over the top of this. I wanted an image with quite spare but graphic line, so thought I’d try a trace monotype. This involves inking a plate, then lying your final piece face down on the top. You draw over the back – basically like using carbon paper – to pick up the ink. Not a very successful result, as you can see:
The bonus was that, not being particularly precious about the initial image, I wasn’t too worried when it didn’t work. More pale ink layers to come for this one I think! The second was more promising – using a traditional monotype approach:
More to be done on this, but it feels like it’s going somewhere. I’m also thinking about the piece of the map key I’d added – somehow the word ‘boundaries’ feels important too. Apparently Leonardo da Vinci said ‘art is never finished, only abandoned’ – I’m nowhere near abandoning this one yet.
Kate Chappell 