Drawing, painting, printmaking - final day

I didn't expect to be working with orange -

It started out with mixing up a bit of leftover red and yellow - too much red and instead of a cheery gold you get - orange. Never mind, it's a nice orange.... Those monoprint marks were an attempt to tame the plate and make it interesting for subsequent use with the press.

Sue did several demos - first, inking up grainy wood for texture, to be used in combination with other things (the tissue paper is to protect the back of the print, and the baren, when doing the rubbing) -

 The grey print is of crumpled paper put through the press -

 Gum arabic transfer - paint gum arabic onto the front and back of a laser-printed image, roll the ink on then sponge the excess off. Ink sticks to the printed ink, as in lithography -

 The print can be printed onto another paper, as in offset printing -

 ... which is useful for printing text right way round -

Back in the Land of Orange, I messed about with this'n'that, even getting as far as adding paper stencils -

 One result -

 Trying to figure out how the masking would actually work -

 ... and the result, combining monoprint with painting -

At the end of the day we laid out our work and said a few words about it - here's part of the room -

 My favourites -

and the very favourite -

Quite an exhausting week. At the end of it all, I'm starting to find my way with monoprinting, have a new subject of "kettles and their interactions" (aren't all objects just stand-ins for people?), and am looking forward to having my studio clear enough to be able to get paper and ink and get going.

This summer the linocut course and this course have given me quite a lot of input. How to keep the inspiration alive till I can actually do some more work along these lines? My aim, along with economy of means, is simplicity that still has a richness.