I had a quick dip into the world of monotypes recently after watching a few short videos. Essentially I spent a bit of time with ink, scrapers and credit cards to see what marks I could make.

These two were fun. I initially thought they were a bit disjointed but I think there’s scope to work further into them and my creative experience tells me that I’ll never get anywhere unless I continue to experiment, whether it works or not.

I then picked up a couple of stencils, some black ink and a paint scraper.

This feels a bit more together than the previous two and was worked in a different method. The top images were created by applying ink, in selected areas, to a blank piece of acetate and running it through the press multiple times – once per each tonal variation. This is called an ‘additive’ process – ink is added to a virgin base.

The third piece is worked by rolling ink over the whole piece of acetate, then removing some areas using a cloth or similar. This is called a ‘reductive’ process – the image becomes apparent where you remove the ink.

I applied a couple of stencils over the surface, removing ink between each one to get the circular patterns. Then a paint scraper was shovelled across the right hand side of the plate removing ink in small ripples.

I enjoyed this exercise. My skills are better with other types of printmaking but it’s good to have a play around with no specific outcome in mind and you never know where it might lead.