Creative techniques and tutorials

How I make my hand-colored digital mini monoprints

Welcome! People want to know more about my technique, so, here I outline the full step-by-step process. For you artists trying to follow along at home: if you don't know Photoshop, some of this might not make sense, but you'll get the basic idea.

I don't have an official gallery page for these monos yet, but I do list these monoprints on eBay, so if you want to see more of them, go there!

Let's start by showing the eventual end result, which is a hand-colored digital monoprint, one of a set of 12 "siblings". Originally they were all together on a single sheet of paper. Each measures 2x2 inches and has ripped edges, with an ID number and a short explanation on the reverse.

As you can see, I've optimized that image for display on a white background (namely, in an eBay auction). The ripped deckle edges shown are for illustration purposes, since I actually scan the monoprints in BEFORE I rip them apart (more on that later...)

Each set of monoprints is based on a drawing, so, here's how I start that process.

I've set up a file in Photoshop which is basically just four tiny dots (enlarged for emphasis) set in a 4-inch square. The lines you see are guide lines, which don't actually print.

I print off a LOT of copies of this grid on thick regular printer paper. I usually prefer cardstock because it won't bleed-through... The cardstock and Sharpie marker I use aren't particularly archival, but archival issues are meaningless at this point (more on that later).

With this stack of pre-dotted paper, I don't have to measure anything. That way I can just keep drawing and drawing and if I mess one up too badly, I can just go to the next sheet. The main point is, the grid keeps the size of my eventual black square background consistent, because when I go to draw the square, I am just connecting the dots with shaky lines.

So, I draw and draw, and eventually end up with something like this:

As you can see, I messed up a bit on the lefthand line. Also note that I didn't bother filling the background in with black. These issues will be fixed later, and they don't matter in the drawing since the drawing is not really part of the end result...

Since I know my original drawing was 4x4, and that it will EVENTUALLY be a 1x1 inch square on a 2x2 inch piece of paper... I scan an 8x8 inch area in, to create my white border. (make sense?) I set my scanner to use super high resolution in "black and white photo" mode (NOT line art! that just makes it jaggy), and save it on my computer.

At this point, I rip up the physical drawing in order to destroy it (I can hear some artists gasping right now!). The drawing is just a step along the way, and destroying the drawing is like "striking the plate" in traditional printmaking. This is why I didn't care about archival issues or mistakes earlier. In other words, the monoprints are NOT reproductions of an "original", particularly considering my next step is to fix the drawing up digitally.

So, into Photoshop we go. First I fix up any stray lines, then I fill in the areas that should be black with black. Then I hit the whole thing with a severe form of "Image > Adjust > Levels" to force the whites into white and the darks to black... Like I said in the beginning of this tutorial, if you don't understand all the Photoshop jargon, don't worry about it. All I'm really saying is, I've cleaned up the scan!

Here's the result:

Now that I have that cleanup done, I shrink it down to 2x2 inches at 400 dpi (800x800 pixels). I prefer to keep Photoshop in "Grayscale" or "RBG" mode, rather than "bitmap", because I want the lines to stay smooth and antialiased. I could print from the full res version, but there's no reason to strain my computer since that wouldn't make the printed result any sharper.

(For you technophiles out there -- wondering WHY you can get a sharp image at 400 dpi, when my modern Epson printer can print at 5760 x 1440 dpi? My image is in grayscale mode, and a 400 dpi antialiased grayscale image has small enough pixels that the printed result doesn't look jaggy. Try it yourself sometime, with a fully antialiased grayscale image, and see that it works.)

BUT, despite all this printerbabble, it's not time to print yet. It's actually time to lay out the 12 copies of the digital image that I will be printing.

Here's my layout template, in Photoshop:

Those blue lines are Photoshop snap-to guide lines, set at 1 inch intervals. I drag 12 copies of my cleaned-up resized scan into this document, and line them up accordingly. The guidelines don't print, but as you can see, I set up cropmarks (darkened for emphasis) which I will use later to rip up the page. That makes life MUCH easier later, and it's actually much more accurate than measuring 2 inch intervals from the edge of the page.

Note that I use this same file to print the explanatory text on the reverse -- the text is what you see there right now, in tiny gray lettering. It reads,

This is a hand-colored
monoprint in a series
of 12 at 2x2". Each
monoprint in this series
is colored differently.
© 2003 Jen Gagne
www.beware-of-art.com

So, once I have a page full of caterpillars, I print it out on GOOD archival watercolor paper, with GOOD archival black ink. I make sure it's set for "black ink only" -- some printers have a tendency to toss other colors into the gray edge tones, even if no colors were there originally.

On the reverse I print the explanatory text (above), without any cropmarks -- the cropmarks should only be on the front, otherwise it gets confusing due to the inevitable slight misalignments between front and back.

I hold this page up to the light to make sure the explanations are fairly well centered behind the image. I guess it doesn't really matter since they're very light gray and don't bleed through in any way, but... I really prefer to keep the text out of the borders of the monoprints.

So, once I'm satisfied, I start coloring:

As you can see above, I've already colored the first three, and made the eyes yellow on the others. I'll eventually color the whole page, but I haven't done that yet so you won't see it in this tutorial... I'll revise later!

My coloring technique: I mostly use markers, but I post these on eBay as "watercolors", since I use a lot of watercolor-type techniques to blend from one color to the next, sometimes brushing with water or alcohol to spread the color further.

The markers I use are much more archival than most markers -- after all, it's only natural for people to assume that "marker" means "non-archival dye based", since that's what most markers are. MY markers use pigment inks (pigment = the same stuff that they use for color in good watercolor paint). They're by Marvy Uchida, sold for scrapbooking.

The coloring is of course the most lengthy and creative step, yet the toughest to really explain in detail... I'll summarize, though. I want lots of contrasting interplay between colors in each individual monoprint, but also across the entire sheet of "siblings". At the same time I must make sure that each is colored differently than the rest, to keep each one original and one of a kind.

Since I'm coloring a digital inkjet print, it's only natural for some of the black ink to bleed into my color areas, particularly if I'm using alcohol to spread the color. Sometimes I use this effect to enhance the sense of texture or contour, but other times I try to avoid it (like when I want a bright clean yellow). The Epson DuraBrite archival inkset is remarkably water-resistant compared to other inkjets, but of course it will dissolve in solvent.

However it turns out, I enjoy artifacts of the process, since it adds to the hand-colored nature.

[ I'll insert the complete colored page as a graphic here later ]

NEXT STEP... let's suppose I've colored the whole page, even though I haven't really yet.

I destroy the digital image at this point (again, "striking the plate" to ensure that my monoprints are the original... since they were my original intention all along, and the digital image is just a step along the way).

I then sign and number each print with "JEN GAGNE", "CP" for color proof, and "1/12" or "2/12" etc.

Since these are monoprints, the numbering is perhaps not appropriate -- the print marked 1/12 is not REALLY one of twelve identical prints! I could technically mark them all 1/1. But, since monoprints are not well understood in the art market (buyers and even printmakers keep mixing the terminology up with monoTYPEs, for example), I prefer to reemphasize that there are 12 "siblings". That's why I use the #/12 format.

I'd rather people semi-incorrectly assume they're a limited edition of 12 that are the same, than be unpleasantly surprised when they spot another monoprint using the same black base image. I'm erring on the side of caution here, to the art collector's benefit.

Next, I write an ID number on the BACK of each, just above the preprinted explanation. It goes like this: "Year SeriesID A #". For the 1/12 print, it would be "2003 0072 A 01". I haven't decided what the "A" means yet. Consider it a placeholder for future meaning! Maybe it will be my size designation -- for example, I am considering doing some 4x4 monoprints someday, or 8x8, and maybe they would be B and C (?).

(An aside about naming conventions: a good naming convention makes it VERY EASY to sort and find the resulting multitude of digital images and thumbnails. Also, since I list these monoprints on eBay, and the other bonus of having such a good naming convention is that when I want to list the next monoprint in a "family", I can just use eBay's "sell similar item" functionality, and change only two numbers in the description to reflect that this is 2/12 instead of 1/12, etc. One in the image URL, and one in the note beneath that image. I also change it in the thumbnail. It's very easy!)

When writing on the back, I have to remember to number right to left rather than the usual left to right, since it's on the reverse... otherwise it won't match the #/12 numbering on the front.

At this point, the monoprints are essentially done. I could go ahead and rip it into individual monos right now, using the crop marks as guides, but I won't do that just yet. It would be extremely inefficient to rip them all up and THEN scan individually and THEN re-composite to show how they all used to look together...

Now is the easiest time to get my color scan of the whole page, which I can later slice up into the individual images with the deckle edge added digitally.

So, I scan it in at very high resolution, and save a copy -- both for posterity, and so I can make reproductions such as notecards later, just like artists do for other original works. I do a bit of image cleanup and white balancing, but not too much -- I don't want to lose data.

Then I composite that image with my "deckle edges" template (resized to fit):

to get this end result:

(again, please pretend that sheet was completely colored...)

So, now I can crop using those guidelines to separate each monoprint digitally, save the images individually at 250x250 pixels, make thumbnails, etc.

That's how I got these:

AFTER all that, I can rip it into individual monoprints. I flip the sheet over onto a clean piece of paper so I'm looking at the back, and put it on my makeshift lightbox (basically, my desk has a frosted glass top, so I hold a lamp between my knees! Voila, a lightbox! Saves me $200+...).

I use a thick transparent acrylic ruler straightedge -- it really helps to use something that doesn't bend, and I make sure to hold it down REALLY tightly. First I rip into strips the long way, then across using the ripped-off edges as rulers to show me where the cropmarks were (before I ripped them off).

I always rip from the back because I don't want the inevitable slight fold between the straightedge and the actual raw edge to show on the front... plus if the edges are going to curl, I would rather them curl back than forward!

There's an art to tearing paper without accidentally ripping across your image or ripping off a layer. If you have a lot of experience, you can just yank off strip after strip casually with consistent results... but if you don't have a lot of experience, go slow. I suggest pulling the strip along and somewhat across your straightedge so the tear doesn't wander away from the edge. Practice makes perfect... preferably practice that doesn't involve wrecking a sheet of monoprints you just spent hours coloring! Eeek!

Occasionally my edges will have "points" on certain corners of the paper, which drive me insane, so I rip those off with tweezers afterwards. Yeah, I'm a perfectionist!

So, that's the longwinded explanation. Hope it helps somebody out there, and have fun! If you happen to use this technique, let me know at jen@beware-of-art.com -- I'd love to see the results!

You can find my other tutorials here.