CHAPTER XII

MONOTYPES

They are charming, these monotypes; charming in effect when finished, delightful in their accidental results, and wholly fascinating in the method, or lack of method, used in their production. Painted with a bristle brush, a camel’s-hair brush, a sponge, a rag or your thumb, as the case may require; painted on glass and then printed on paper, with a clothes-wringer for a printing-press; can anything be more enchantingly unconventional? Yet the finished monotypes are truly artistic and beautiful. If you can paint at all, be it ever so little, you can make some kind of a monotype, and you will always have the feeling that you can do better next time. The

=Materials=

for your work are a piece of glass about six inches square, a tube of lamp-black oil-paint, some sewing-machine oil, and a pad of unruled writing-paper.

See that your glass is perfectly clean and free from dust, squeeze out some of the black paint in a saucer and mix it with a few drops of the machine oil. You will soon learn the consistency required, for if you make the paint too thin it will run and blot, and if there is not enough oil it will go on too thickly and smudge in printing.

=The Painting=

Choose a photograph or print for your copy which is simple in effect—that is, one which shows a good deal of sky and broad stretches of light and shade. It may be either landscape or marine, but, until you have had some experience with the work, avoid figure pieces, and architecture. When you have learned the process be as original as you like, but keep to your copy at first; you will never make an exact reproduction. Use whatever kind of a paint-brush seems best fitted, and work rapidly that the paint may not dry. A fine soft sponge will give excellent foliage effects; this should be dipped in the paint and simply dabbed on the glass. A clean cotton rag will take off extra paint and is especially useful where water is represented in the picture. By dragging the rag or sponge over a surface too thickly painted you can loosen it and give the appearance of grass and shrubbery, or of a roadway. Soft clouds can be made by putting the cloth over the end of your finger and rubbing on the glass with a circular movement, using but little paint; for an ordinary sky make horizontal strokes with the rag, keeping the tint as flat as possible. If you place a piece of white paper under the glass the work will be easier, for you will appear to be painting on a white surface and the transparency of the glass will not trouble you.

If you have ever painted

=Heads,=

sooner or later you will long to try one with this process. A woman’s head with flowing, wind-blown hair seems especially adapted to the work. A bristle brush and the ever-useful rag will spin the hair out, and toss it about in decorative masses. For the face you will need a small pad made of soft silk, or muslin, and raw cotton—indeed, several pads will be found useful. Cut the silk into a four-inch square, place in the centre a wad of raw cotton about the size of a hickory nut, and, drawing the silk smoothly over the cotton at the bottom, bring it together at the top; wrap with thread close to the cotton and tie securely.

Draw the outlines of the face lightly with a fine camel’s-hair brush, and lay in the shadows broadly with a large brush; then take your pad and go over the shadows, stippling them with little dabs until they are smooth and free from brush strokes. When it is necessary to deepen a shadow add more paint with the pad.

Do not put in the features with hard lines, let the face be modelled with light and shade, making deeper accents where more sharpness is required. The definite strokes about the eyes, the nostrils, and the line between the lips can be made with a brush without hardness. Hard lines never look well in a monotype; they stand out harshly from the general softness of the effect, and appear unpleasantly out of place.

=The Printing=

When your painting is finished, slightly dampen a piece of paper by passing a wet sponge across one side, lay the dampened side carefully on the glass next to the paint, and then pass both through the clothes-wringer. Remember to hold the glass as it comes through that it may not fall and break. Lift your paper off lightly and quickly, without dragging, and you have the completed monotype, like, and yet unlike, the picture you painted. In the first place, the design is reversed, and then there are often beautiful effects which your brush could never have produced. If the painting on the glass still holds, try another print, and even a third; the first are not always the best.

When no more impressions can be taken, wipe the paint from the glass with a cloth and begin another picture.

=Monotone Monotypes=

A very pretty experiment is to use color instead of black and make a monotone of your monotype. Sepia will give the picture in soft brown, Indian red in bright red, while Antwerp blue produces the tone of blue found in a blueprint photograph. Of course oil colors alone must be used, water colors will not print.

=Another Field for Experiment=

lies in using several colors in one picture. For instance, you might make your mountains blue, your trees green, and your foreground red and yellow.

Then again mixing the colors and using them as if painting on canvas will prove interesting. The deepest pleasure in all work of this kind is to experiment and discover methods for ourselves, then to work out and perfect these methods and make them all our own.

There are various

=Papers=

suitable for monotype painting. Rice-paper is especially pleasing; it is soft of texture, light of weight, and has a warm, creamy tone. The monotypes printed upon it are delicate, clear, and distinct. Imported blotting-paper also produces satisfactory results, though the print is not quite as soft in effect; it has a smooth, rather hard surface, but takes the paint well. Both of these papers are used dry.

Some professionals use a Japan paper and a Holland paper. The Japan paper is very thin, and the Holland paper has a surface like water-color paper, but is heavier than the ordinary kind.

For first efforts the unruled, ten-cent writing pad is the best. Very good prints can be made on this, and one feels free to experiment as much as heart desires with such inexpensive material. The monotypes given here were painted on writing-paper and imported blotting-paper.