Monoprinting and paper marbling in Easel by Zaweba

Printmaking has a magic moment: you lift the paper and see the print for the first time. Monoprinting and marbling both have it. Each produces a single, unrepeatable print, and both are part of Easel by Zaweba.

What a monoprint is

A monoprint, sometimes called a monotype, is a print you can only make once. In real printmaking, you paint or roll ink onto a smooth plate, then press paper onto it and lift. The image transfers to the paper with a soft, textured quality no brush can quite match.

In Easel, monoprint uses the palette as the plate. That ties it neatly to the physical palette, where you squeeze paint, mix it with a knife and load your brush. Whatever is on your palette can become a print.

Making a monoprint

Work the palette as if it were a plate. Lay down colour, mix and push it with the knife, make marks with a brush. Then take the print.

Because the palette is already part of how you paint in Easel, monoprinting fits naturally into a session. A leftover mix that looks interesting can become the background of a new picture. A deliberately painted palette becomes a print in its own right.

A monoprint is at its best when you accept a little chance. The texture of the plate, the way paint thins at the edges and the odd unexpected mark are what make it a print rather than a painting.

What marbling is

Marbling is the old craft of floating colours on a liquid bath, swirling them into patterns, then laying paper on top to pick them up. It gives the swirls and feathered patterns you see inside old book covers.

In Easel, marbling uses drop, comb, stylus and lift. Those are the four steps of the real craft.

Making a marbled sheet

Drop colours onto the surface of the bath. Start with a few drops of one colour, then add another into or around them, so the rings push against each other.

Use the stylus to draw through the colours, making swirls, hearts or simple loops. Use the comb to drag regular patterns, such as the fine combed waves of traditional Turkish and Italian marbling.

When you like the pattern, lift. The pattern moves onto the paper.

The joy of marbling is that no two sheets are alike. A pattern that starts with the same drops and the same combing passes will still come out slightly different each time, which is why marbled papers were prized as endpapers in fine books. Keep a few of your favourite sheets as backgrounds for other work. They make a lovely base for calligraphy, cards and small paintings, and the swirls give a sense of movement even under a quiet design.

Getting good prints

For monoprints, don't overload the palette. Too much paint gives a heavy, blurry print. Thinner layers give more detail.

For marbling, keep to a few colours. Two or three that work well together look better than a rainbow. Plan your combing passes: one pass one way, then back the other, is the classic route to feathered patterns.

Both crafts reward play. Make several prints and keep the best. Undo and the time-lapse make it easy to see what you did and try again. Marbled sheets make beautiful backgrounds for lettering, endpapers and cards, and Easel by Zaweba lets you make as many as you like.