I managed to make enough time yesterday to spend a great deal of it experimenting with mono printing. Although I ended up with a load of waste paper, and little of artistic value, I learned from the experience. The project on which I have been working for a couple of weeks now has been heading off in the wrong direction.
My original idea was to work up a series of drawings I had made on the theme of the old English custom of “Wassail”, as mono prints. The more I look into the medium, however, the more I am convinced that this is a totally inappropriate medium. Monoprints are ideal for exploring texture, but as far as I can tell not easy to control if precision of line is important. The ideas I had were all line drawings, with little if any opportunity to explore the interest of texture. So: not exactly “back to the drawing board”, but definitely time for a rethink.
There was one nice spin-off, however, and that is that in the course of my experiments I came up with an rather nice idea for a Valentine card, which was received well this morning. So: that’s OK.