Now a few self-portraits. During my level two relief printmaking class I decided to explore self-portraits. It was a new thing for me because I had not really done any self-portraits in any medium up until then.

This is my favorite self-portrait that I did during that class, and probably my favorite that I've ever done. It's a very unique-looking print. I used chine colle to get the streaks of color.

This is a self-portrait that is a facsimile of a print done by relief printmaker extraordinaire Antonio Fransconi. The original print had the likeness of Edgar Allen Poe in the background instead of my face.

This one is actually a monotype and not a relief print. A monotype is a type of printmaking where you can only make one of the print, i.e. you can't edition it like you could with a relief, intaglio, or lithograph. The ink is put onto a plastic plate and you can add or subtract ink to the plate to create your image; It's very much like painting or drawing. Once you have your image then you print the plate and what you drew on the plate is now on the paper! After printing the plate though most of the ink is gone on it disappears and you can't print it again. Hence the term monotype.