Monoprinting with Glassine

I've been playing with thickened dyes on glassine in order to create some more textures that embody stillness and tranquillity.  I'm not sure how successful my experiments were but I thought I would share.

Glassine is a super shiny plastic with a static surface that causes liquids to pull together - think droplets of water on a water proof finish. The thickness of the liquid and how much you put on influence the patterns this forms. I took a large piece of glassine and painted on bands of colour from my Dunure colour family. I blended the colours a bit and tried to introduce some linear movement. With the help of a friend (thanks Ruth!) I carefully laid on top a piece of dry soda soaked fabric. We then used our hands to press the fabric onto the glassine creating the monoprint.

I had stuck lengths of masking tape across the fabric before using it and these acted as a resist. I let the monoprint dry and removed the tape. I used more tape to mask off a new set of bands across the fabric covering some of the original printed area but not all.

I then added more thickened dye to the glassine and repeated the printing process. I tried to use less dye for the second print to avoid some large blotchy areas. I also used more colours from the pale part of the colour family.

Having created this second layer I let the fabric batch overnight before washing out. There are some interesting areas within the print but mostly it looks like a multi-coloured spotty animal skin. Which would be fantastic if I had wanted multi-coloured spotty animal skin! Maybe I need to play some more.