Monoprint software that uses your palette as the plate
Easel by Zaweba has a monoprint technique that uses its physical palette as the plate, so you can pull one-off prints on a PC, free and offline.
For monoprinting on a PC, try Easel by Zaweba, a free and offline painting studio for Windows, which includes monoprint as one of its techniques, and it uses the physical palette as the plate. You lay and mix paint on the palette, then print from it onto your chosen surface, which gives the one-off, slightly unpredictable prints that monoprinting is loved for.
Monoprinting (and its close relative monotype) is the simplest kind of printmaking. Ink or paint is rolled or brushed onto a smooth plate, such as glass, metal or a gel plate, then paper is pressed onto it and peeled off. Only one good print comes from each inking, hence the name. Textures, brush marks, wiped-out areas and objects pressed into the plate all show in the print.
Why the palette works as a plate
In Easel the palette is a real working surface. You squeeze paint onto it from colour sets, mix with the knife (paint is pushed and folded, never lost), and load brushes from any mix. Using that same surface as the plate means everything you do while mixing becomes part of the print: streaks of half-mixed colour, knife marks, swirls where you worked a brush through.
Ways to prepare the plate
Mix with intent. Instead of tidy piles of colour, spread paint across the palette with the knife in the shapes you want to print. Broad sweeps make bold prints; dabs make spotty textures.
Use contrast. A dark colour next to a light one gives a clearer print than two similar colours. Colour mixes like pigment, using the Kubelka-Munk model, so you can rely on colours blending believably where they meet.
Think in reverse. A print is a mirror of the plate, which matters when shapes or lettering are involved. The mirror view, which only changes how the picture is shown on screen and never the painting itself, is a quick way to check how things will read.
Choosing the surface
The print lands on the surface you started the picture on, and Easel has 37 of them. Cartridge paper and hot-pressed watercolour paper give crisp prints. Rough watercolour paper breaks the print up with its tooth. Toned, kraft and rice papers each give a different mood.
Building a print in layers
Monoprints are often built in several passes. Print once, mix new colour on the palette, and print again on top. Letting the first layer dry between passes keeps the colours separate; the drying speed slider and Dry now help there. Masking tape and stencils can block parts of the paper for a pass, giving clean shapes within the texture.
Undo keeps 80 steps by default, so an unlucky pull can be taken back, which is one advantage a digital monoprint has over the real thing.
Related transfer techniques
Easel also offers marbling (drop, comb, stylus and lift), decalcomania, stamps with rubber, potato, leaf or an imported shape, and collage with image transfer. Combining them is a good way to make rich backgrounds. A monoprint base with stamped shapes over it, or a marbled sheet with a monoprint layer, are both worth trying.
Keeping prints and pulls
Save as .zeasel to keep the palette and the print together for another session, or export PNG, JPEG or TIFF at 1x or 2x. The time-lapse records each pull, so the whole session can be exported as a WebM video or web page, a nice way to show a printmaking process to others.
