Second Floor Challenge #3: Truth

Today is the third Second Floor challenge!  Are you ready to take it to the second floor?

The challenge this time around is to create something inspired by truth.  Whatever that means to you or however it inspires you.  The prompt is simply meant to get you started.  The level of challenge you aim for is entirely internal and up to you.

Click here to see what Nat did.

As for me, I started with a small monoprint...

...and then worked my way around to this image:

Hmmmmmm...that's pretty unreadable.  So I decided to work on a bigger plate and with a bigger tool.

I liked it, but I wondered if the image was too obvious.  Various iterations of the image developed....

And then I changed it up a bit....

Some of these prints are pretty darn cool, but I wondered: was I really taking it to the Second Floor?  Probably not.  I had already experimented with this layered printing technique this weekend, so I needed to do something to push myself.

But what?

I decided to print on fabric and stitch up a little quilt.  Here are two fabric prints:

And my little quilt:

The quilt started as a piece of monoprinted fabric.  I added some fabric bits into portions of the design (including some sun printed fabric), stitched it up, and then added paint.  This monoprint on paper is the first print from the same plate:

And here's a peek at the back of the quilt:

I used a piece of fabric that I had painted months ago.  Love that!

Here's what I learned from this experiment:

• Fabric and paper take monoprinting very differently.  Fabric is much more absorbent and so it's much more difficult to get a clean second or "ghost" print from the plate.
• I miss quilting.  This was the first quilt I've made in about six months.  It felt so good to sit at the machine and let the free motion foot fly.  You can see how densely quilted the piece is.  I just couldn't stop sewing!
• I think I already knew it, but I love monoprinting!  It's such an immediate art form and certainly the most painterly printing technique on earth.  I can see now that I am in the grips of a love affair!
• With the oil-based paint I had trouble lifting it from the plate with anything but a cotton swab.  I suspect that a water-based paint may lift with a tool like the back of a paintbrush, but I'll have to test that theory!
• I got lazy when I quilted and didn't pin it.  Truth be told, I didn't even iron the rumpled fabric.  I just sort of smooshed it all together and you know, it's a small enough piece that I don't think it made that big a difference.
• I loved using up some fabric bits I had sitting around, namely the sun printed fabric and the painted fabric.  I have so much stuff at this point that I love it when some of it ends up in my artwork.  This is one of the reasons that I'm loving Project Life.  It has me using up so much of that "stuff."
• This Second Floor project is so good for me.  Without the need to write this blog post and do something that pushed myself I would have stopped with the prints.  I was happy with them.  There was no reason to go any further.  But I needed to take it to the Second Floor in order to write this post.  So I did.  And I'm thrilled with the results and the new ideas that are floating around in my brain!  We all need that little push to take a step further sometimes, don't you think?

If you'd like to show off your response to this Second Floor challenge, leave a link!

Thanks for stopping by!