Elevate Art - Colored Clay Monotypes

What's a monotype, you ask? And why are they called prints? And why aren't they called monoprints? What they are is an original print, which often gets confusing because people think of a print as being one of many as in an open or limited edition of the same image.

If you printed the same image, say a tree, on 10 sheets of paper and then took those 10 tree images and printed a different foreground over each tree you would have 10 monoprints. The tree is the same in each print but everything else is different - therefore each is an original - or a monoprint.

Why they picked the term monotype I'm not sure, but what it means is I use a printing process, but each one is an original print. I often get asked to reproduce an image, but it's impossible - there's no way I could re-create the layers that went into the original monotype. For more information on this process see my Artist Statement page.

I could reproduce my prints digitally, but at this time I don't - I kind of like the one of a kind idea.

I learned this fascinating process from Mitch Lyons, an artist from Pennsylvania - he's the one who came up with this concept and he has been doing it for over 20 years. You can see his work and a short video of a print being created on his web site.