Ronni Hunter Studios

"Monoprinting"

2013: More catching up!

"Lynne Perrella", "Monoprinting", "abstract art", "art quilt", "art", "mixed-media", "quilting"Ronni HunterComment

In April 2013 I took a workshop with the amazing Sue Benner .  The workshop was all about abstraction and we were asked to bring some examples of artwork from another artist we admired.  Sue showed us images of artwork done by past artists who had used artworks they admired as inspiration for further abstraction studies.  The artist I chose for my inspiration was Lynne Perrella.  This was my first workshop with the Front Range Contemporary Quilters and I was hugely intimidated by my fellow students and Sue herself.  In spite of that I had a wonderful time and learned more than I could have hoped to in a few short days.  At the end of the workshop I had two very incomplete pieces of art, but seeing as I would be jetting off to Connecticut three weeks later I was not able to continue working on these pieces when I got home. The workshop in CT with Lynne Perrella and Michelle Ward was one of the best things I have ever done and also left me with unfinished artwork.  I spent the summer working on those pieces and then along came the workshop with Katie Pasquini Masopust and more incomplete art.  Well, I'm happy to say that I have now finished all the artwork I started in these various workshops.  At the end of the Sue Benner workshop my first piece looked like this:

And now it looks like this:

The photo does not do it justice as you cannot really see the lovely sheen of the silks and the sparkly organzas.  My best friend made the little polymer clay faces for me and I just love them!  Wow, putting these photos together is an interesting instruction in photography!  Hmmm.......  

The second piece that I began at that workshop looked like this when I got home:

Sorry for the blurry and off color photo.  Knowing it was nowhere near finished, I did not put much effort into taking a good shot.  I was pretty excited by this piece as it was quite a departure from my usual stuff and I liked where it was going.  After practicing on other things to explore monoprinting and quilting options, I ended up with this:

One of the most important things I learned from the three workshops was that I tend to be much too literal.  I am now exploring ways to take things further and to expand on my original concepts.  Invaluable!  Each of the pieces I began in a workshop last year has led to other pieces of art and more ideas.  I learned new techniques and made friends and I can't wait to do it again in 2014.

Printing with my Gelli Arts printing plate

"Deli paper", "Gelli arts", "Monoprinting", "Stacked Journaling", "paint"Ronni HunterComment

I recently bought myself a Gelli Arts printing plate.  For some reason I no longer recall I felt I really had to have one of these things.  They are fun to play with!  The trouble is that it is hard to stop.  I had a huge stack of prints in just an hour!  I don't think any of them are really stellar and I can see I need more practice, but it was fun.  I used deli paper for experimenting.  Deli paper is great for collage, which is good since none of these are a great work of art in an of themselves.  They can be cut up and used in art journaling or something.  I also made a lot of painty pages from cleaning off my brayer and paintbrushes.  I used those for some stacked journaling.  Here are a few of the papers I like.  

I purchased the Martha Stewart texturing kit at Home Depot.  It has lots of combs etc. for making marks.

Bubble wrap was one of my favorite mark making tools.  I used the painty bubble wrap to stamp onto other papers too.

Playing with stacked journaling using the end of a paintbrush.

I was trying something I thought was clever and ended up with a very wet and faint print so I scribbled over the top with a squeeze bottle of black paint.

Here I am playing with drawing fluid and expressive lines with the squeeze bottle of paint.  The painted paper is one I used to wipe excess paint on while playing with the printing plate.

Another page of "clean up paper" with some stacked journaling on top.  That darned squeeze bottle blobs up a lot.  Got to work on that.

Another clean up page with stacked journaling in colors with a brush. 

While printing with the plate I would stamp my painty bubble wrap off onto more paper.  I didn't clean it between colors and it left wonderful mixed dots.  You can't really tell in the picture that some of this paint is metallic and really shines!

Another wet sloppy print with stacked journaling, this time with a  flat brush.

I was trying stacked journaling on the printing plate and just kept printing all over these pages.  It was blobby and messy but I think the marks are evocative