Monotyping

Mythological scene with Apollo, Fame, and the

Muses by Antoine Sallaert

Monotyping is a type of printmaking

made by drawing or painting on a
smooth, non-absorbent surface. The
surface, or matrix, was historically a
copper etching plate, but in
contemporary work it can vary from zinc
or glass to acrylic glass. The image is
then transferred onto a sheet of paper by
pressing the two together, usually using a
printing-press. Monotypes can also be
created by inking an entire surface and
then, using brushes or rags, removing ink
to create a subtractive image, e.g.
creating lights from a field of opaque
colour. The inks used may be oil based or
water based. With oil based inks, the
paper may be dry, in which case the
image has more contrast, or the paper
may be damp, in which case the image
has a 10 percent greater range of tones.
Monotyping produces a unique print, or
monotype; most of the ink is removed
during the initial pressing. Although
subsequent reprintings are sometimes
possible, they differ greatly from the first
print and are generally considered
inferior. These prints from the original
plate are called "ghost prints." A print
made by pressing a new print onto
another surface, effectively making the
print into a plate, is called a "cognate".
Stencils, watercolor, solvents, brushes,
and other tools are often used to
embellish a monotype print. Monotypes
can be spontaneously executed and with
no previous sketch.
History

Monotype by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione,

probably a second impression

There is still no certainty as to who was

the inventor of the monotype process.
The Italian artist Giovanni Benedetto
Castiglione (1609–64) is often credited
as being the first artist to produce
monotypes. He made brushed sketches
intended as finished and final works of
art.[1] He began to make monotypes in
the mid 1640s, normally working from
black to white, and produced over twenty
surviving ones, over half of which are set
at night. It is believed that the Flemish
artist Antoine Sallaert created his first
monotypes in the early 1640s and is
therefore to be regarded as the inventor
of this printing process. Both artists used
the new technique in different ways.
Castiglione created most of his
monotypes as black-field images by
wiping away ink on a prepared plate thus
producing white and grey lines. Sallaert,
on the other hand, brushed bold, tapering
lines onto the printing surface with
meticulous precision. It is likely that
Sallaert's monotype style was influenced
by the chiaroscuro woodcuts of the
Dutch engraver Hendrik Goltzius. Sallaert
found in the monotype a technique which
was the closest to drawing and oil
sketching. His monotypes and drawings
are characterised by swelling lines and
tapering ends. He often added by hand
white highlights to his monotypes.[2][3]
Sallaert clearly appreciated in the
monotype technique the freedom to
design on a plate before printing it on
paper.[4]
Visions of the Daughters of Albion, a combination by
Blake of relief etching for the lines and monotype for

the colour

William Blake developed a different

technique, painting on millboard in egg
tempera to produce both new works and
coloured impressions of his prints and
book illustrations, including his Pity. Each
impression was usually then worked over
by hand, using ink and watercolour. Few
other artists used the technique until
Degas, who made several, often working
on them further after printing (Beside the
Sea, 1876-7 ); Pissarro also made
several. Paul Gauguin used a variant
technique involving tracing, later taken up
by Paul Klee. In the twentieth century the
technique became more popular, such as
the extraordinary colorful monotypes
created by Marc Chagall in the 1960s.[5]

Comparing monotypes to
monoprints
Historically, the terms monotype and
monoprint were often used
interchangeably.[6] More recently,
however, they have come to refer to two
different, though similar, types of
printmaking. Both involve the transfer of
ink from a plate to the paper, canvas, or
other surface that will ultimately hold the
work of art. In the case of monotypes,
the plate is a featureless plate. It
contains no features that will impart any
definition to successive prints. The most
common feature would be the etched or
engraved line on a metal plate. In the
absence of any permanent features on
the surface of the plate, all articulation of
imagery is dependent on one unique
inking, resulting in one unique print.
Additionally, the term monotype is often
used for an image made by inking a non-
absorbent surface with a solid colour,
laying over it a piece of paper and
drawing onto the back of the paper.
When the paper is pulled off the resulting
print consists of the line surrounded by
ink picked up from the inked plate. The
result has a chance element, often
random and irregular which gives the
print a certain charm, a technique
famously used by British artist Tracey
Emin, a graduate of the Royal College of
Art, where the practice of monoprinting in
general was regarded as "fake painting".

Monoprints, on the other hand, now

refers to the results of plates that have
permanent features on them. Monoprints
can be thought of as variations on a
theme, with the theme resulting from
some permanent features being found on
the plate—lines, textures—that persist
from print to print. Variations are
confined to those resulting from how the
plate is inked prior to each print. The
variations are endless, but certain
permanent features on the plate will tend
to persist from one print to the next.

See also
Monoprinting
Paper marbling
Digiglyph

References
1. Prints and Printmaking, Antony
Griffiths, British Museum Press (in UK),
2nd ed., 1996 ISBN 0-7141-2608-X
2. Todd D. Weyman, Two Early Monotypes
by Sallaert, in: Print Quarterly Vol. 12, No.
2 (JUNE 1995), p. 164-169
3. M. Royalton Kisch, A Monotype by
Sallaert, in: Print Quarterly, 1988, V, n. 1, p.
60-61
4. Kelley Notaro, An Exhibition of the
Finest Monotypes from the Cleveland
Museum of Art's Collection at The
Cleveland Museum of Art site
5. Marc Chagall Monotypes, Gerald
Cramer, Editor, Geneva 1966
6. Singular impressions: the monotype in
America. Joann Moser. Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1997.

Sources
Reed, Sue Welsh & Wallace, Richard,
Italian Etchers of the Renaissance and
Baroque, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
1989,pp 262–5,ISBN 0-87846-306-2 or
304-4 (pb)

External links
Media related to Monotypes at
Wikimedia Commons
Video explaining the monotype
process
 Prints & People: A Social History of
Printed Pictures , an exhibition catalog
from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
(fully available online as PDF), which
contains material on monotyping

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