Whilst foraging for tannin rich soil in the local park, I took the opportunity to take some small cuttings with a view to trying out some monoprinting. I figured it would be a welcome break in my cyanotype focus, but still very much inkeeping with my current work. I could also use the cuttings to develop some more cyanotypes, before using them to monoprint with, giving an extra dimension to the same image.

One of the benefits of having a glass topped table! What I soon realised however, is that less is definitely more! Initially I figured I would need to completely cover the leaves with the black ink, but this actually left too much ink on the paper I felt, and the fine detail of the leaf veins was somewhat lost in the thick black ink.

I started with two A4 pieces of smooth cartridge paper, using two different types of foliage. I then tore a sheet into 4 A6 sized pieces and did some smaller prints using just one of the leaf stems.

I really enjoyed the process of this, but I definitely feel I need to refine my inking technique – it seems very different from inking lino due to the raised texture of the leaves and stem. The top leaves in the image above came out a lot better, whereas the prints at the bottom were too heavily inked on the outer edges of the leaves and not inked enough on the inner part. I think this was largely due to the stem getting in the way of my roller.

Overall, I enjoyed its simplicity and minimalist look and will frame these on my process wall once they have dried fully.

It also got me thinking about how I could potentially use the monoprinting technique to layer onto the cyanotype, using the same botanicals. Something definitely worthy of future consideration – I may even have a go on some of my smaller test pieces, that have already been through the mill!