Hello wonderful creatives!

I’m a Dutch mixed media artist and teacher living in Antwerp and the past year I have been utterly obsessed with printmaking. While having access to a press is wonderful, most of us don’t have that luxury. Fortunately there are many ways to enjoy this interesting way of making art from the comfort of our own home and I’m going to share my favorite technique of them all; mono printing on Plexiglass. There is just something special about the texture and atmosphere.

In theatre, a monologue is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their mental thoughts aloud. As an artist, I try to communicate in the exact same way, but instead of words I use expression as well as the seven elements of art: line, color, shape, form, value, space and texture. In this class we will explore all of these ingredients in our mission to make expressive portraits.

It’s not our goal to replicate; we’re not here to achieve likeness or realism. We will use our reference photos as a guide to help us to find our own interesting characters in our own unique style.

This class is suitable for anyone who likes to experiment and enjoys making art in an intuitive way.

Lots of love,

Jerney Marisha

Lesson 1 : Getting to know your tools

In this lesson you will explore the different tools and techniques that will help you to make the following projects your own.

We will end this lesson with a couple of quirky warm up prints. Perfection is overrated, let’s play!

Lesson 2 : The Additive method

Now that we are all warmed up, let’s dive into our first mono printing technique. I will also share some tips on a little bit of troubleshooting if any problems should arise.

Lesson 3 : the subtractive method

For our second portrait we’re going to mix it up and I will teach you how to bring light into the darkness while we are making our drawing directly on the printing plate.

If you lost some details while making your print, don’t worry. I will show you a nice way of putting them back in while adding a hint of color to your art.

Lesson 4 : Mixed media magic

What happens when we combine the beautiful texture of printmaking with that of an acrylic painting? Let’s find out together on this intuitive adventure!

Bonus lesson : let’s create gelliprints that will tickle your muses

But wait… there’s more! 

In this lesson, I will show you a relaxing way to print acrylic backgrounds that will get you started whenever you’re feeling like you’re in a rut. I will also show you how I usually go about finding my stories in these backgrounds. Time for some whimsical fun and expressive brush strokes!

What will you learn in this class?

• Monoprinting techniques

• A variety of ways to make interesting marks

• How to correct and fine tune your prints

• Tips on creating an expressive portrait

• How to create inspiring backgrounds with the gelliplate

• Techniques to work more intuitively

• Block Printing Ink (Black and Deep Blue)

• Acrylics

• Brayer

• Rice Paper

• Mixed Media Paper

• Neocolor II Crayons (You can substitute these for anything that you like to work with)

• All kinds of drawing or mark making tools that you already have on hand

• Baby Wipes & Q-tips

• Gelliplate (for the bonus lesson)

• 2 Plexiglass Plates (You can order them online in any size you want. Mine are approximately 8x11 inches)