I am itching to paint. When I make monotypes it's more like making a sustained drawing. I use old socks to remove ink, I use small brushes, the handle; I am working small. I don't go through the expansive period like I do in a painting, that would feel good right now… I looked at Becker and the planes of colour that are the fields of Suffolk on my doorstep for inspiration.
I began this monotype by rolling the sky colour over the whole plate - I didn't even take the previous image off the plate... Then I removed ink where the darkest places of what I was looking at were. I mixed a purple black and described the trees and the far horizon line. I used a lot of Akua Transparent base which probably wasn't what I wanted, I think of it as burnt plate reducing oil but it isn't really. It isn't as viscous and it wipes differently. The tree on the right looked dark on the plate but later when I went to print it it was not as dark as I needed.
The finished print was reworked with quite a bit of pastel over it which gives it a more painterly feel, I think. The colours are surpringly bright, much like the light as it went in and out of the clouds but I miss the feeling that the landscape emerged. It feels more as if the landscape was pieced together like a puzzle.
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