In my recent dye session. I played around with mono printing, which is great fun. This was my first piece. The colors were brushed horizontally, but I left the squirted “eyeball” in tact.
There was a lot of dye left on the plastic, so I printed a “ghost.” As you can see, the brushed on dye was already used up, but the more gloppy eyeball printed fairly nicely.
So, I learned something: if I squirt on generous amounts, I can get a second print. And it will be somewhat different from the first. I tried it again, with these two. Not very ghostly, but the colors have moved and merged. Very interesting.
You can also mono print in a “finger paint” sort of way. These had dye brushed on pretty smoothly. Then, I drew or scraped through them. I’ll definitely be doing more of this!
When I switched to shiny plastic as my surface the dye beaded up. Which actually gave me a wonderful texture. I’ll be doing more of this, too!
I learned a lot. Some of these are not too usable – yet. But, hey, I know how to over dye, so I’m not worried.
I’ve written a short tutorial about mono printing. The underlined text at left is a direct link, or you can find it in the Articles section of Learn with Ellen. If you give it a try, I’d love to see your results!
Ellen Lindner