Watercolor and Outdoor Sketching as Inspiration for Monotype Printmaking, 2027, with Wendy Prellwitz: Workshop with Wendy Prellwitz

Workshop Description Time spent looking and sketching outdoors is a great way to experience the surrounding landscape and take notice of what interests you. By working quickly on simple sketches, (which is often a must in the variable weather!), I find one can stay can stay loose, generate multiple ideas and compositions, record local color...and appreciate the awesome beauty of North Mayo. Watercolor, gouache, pencil, and pen, etc are all options for media; you will refer to those sketches to develop monotype prints in the printshop. Monotype printing is often referred to a “painterly” way of printing, as one applies pigment to plastic plates for a one-of-a-kind print, using brush and brayer. Watercolor is applied to multiple plates with brushes, much like painting; color layers are separated onto two plates and printed on dampened watercolor paper. Inks are applied to multiple plates as well, using rollers & brushes with Akua inks mixed in varying viscosities to layer color. I will lead an introduction to watercolor techniques and color mixing for outdoor work, as well as demonstrate the two approaches to monotype, using watercolor and the viscosity method of layering Akua inks. The workshop schedule will combine outdoor painting / drawing and indoor printing…the times of which are of course weather-dependent. My plan is to begin at 9:00 and aim for a few 2 to 3-hour morning field trips to work at nearby outdoor locations, via car-pooling; if there’s time and interest, we will take one full-day trip further afield. In the afternoons, we will work in the printshop after lunch til 4:00ish, and review /discuss the day’s work afterward. There will be a few all-day printshop sessions.