Monotype: Potted Rosemary

Potted Rosemary 18x24 Monotype with Watercolor

Process shots start at the bottom of this post

The image above was snapped with my cell phone; I'll post a better photo over the weekend.

 After working on the monotype with watercolor  - still damp  - I'm holding it in front of me to give a sense of scale

 Despite the fact that the painted monotype plate sat propped against a wall in my arid studio (I live in the desert) for 8 weeks, I was amazed to see how much pigment lifted when I pulled the print. Akua Intaglio inks are rocking my world.

The moment of truth - about to pull the print after a trip through the press.

I called the good folks at Akua and asked about my dilemma, and they assured me that the ink was still wet, and I'd be able to pull the monotype, despite the two months of air drying. They told me the ink might be a little thicker, but it was still good to go. I reached over and pressed a finger into a blue shadow passage on the plate, and voila, I had a blueberry colored fingertip. In the meantime, I ordered these three modifiers (above) for future work when I'm using a large plate and need more time with the mark-making and painting.

 In the middle of working on this - in November - I realized the holidays were upon us. This poor, partially painted plate sat neglected through the rest of November and December and the first two weeks of January.  Every time I walked into my studio, I saw it leaning against the wall, jelly side out, staring at me with an unfinished-pigment-pout.  I worried that the water based ink was surely rock hard and unprintable. I also wondered how I was going to get the ink off the plate if it was completely dry and beyond rescue.

This is the same sanded and beveled plate I used on a previous post, and I'm painting with Akua water based Intaglio inks directly on the plate, layering color, and leaving my brush marks loose and edgy. I used water to thin the ink for some transparent passages on the plate, but I'll be using modifiers from now on, because  the folks at Akua informed me that water tends to dull and lighten the brilliance of the pigment.

---

Art Quote

When I was in art school, one of my fellow students painted a series of dead fish. She had seen one of Manet's oil still life paintings of a fish on a platter, ad it triggered an explosion of inspiration. My friend went to the market and bought dozens of fish. She painted them frozen, thawed, in piles, on newspaper, in jars, lying on the table, and in frying pans. She reveled in their shimmery scales and slippery textures for weeks on end, and her apartment smelled like the town dump. I was envious beyond description. It wasn't that I wanted to paint fish or flies; I just wanted to find something that I felt that passionate about to paint.  

At the time, I knew I wanted to paint, but I didn't know what I wanted to express. For several years I painted a shopping list of subject matter; still lifes, landscapes, flowers, nudes, animals and seascapes. Although most of the paintings found a home on someone's wall, none of them were truly aligned with my most passionate feelings, simply because I didn't know what those emotions were. Since then, I have found what it is that I feel strongly about, and my paintings look more like they are mine. Although I must admit that painting hasn't gotten any easier, it has become even more engaging.

Mary Whyte ~ Painting Portraits & Figures in Watercolor 2011