By day, LuAnn Roberto is a creative director, brand strategist and owner of 411 Graphics (www.411grfx.com) based in Redondo Beach, California. But LuAnn Roberto is foremost and always an artist. With her refined sense of design, a deep appreciation for the accidents of creativity and experimentation, and a generous sense of humor, she creates wall art, patterns and prints for any application.

“My medium is both contemporary graphic design and old school monoprinting,” LuAnn says. “Whereas my professional designs have to be really tight and controlled, with monoprinting, you have no idea what’s going to happen on the press. Whatever you paint will be backwards and get smashed when it rolls through the press. This has enhanced my daily design work and made me an advocate for trying the unexpected.”

Monoprinting is a combination of painting and printmaking techniques that gives the artist freedom to work with a wide selection of materials such as inks, pencils, crayons, and pastels, and to choose from a variety of methods to transfer images. To create a monotype the artist paints or rolls ink onto a blank plate. The image is created by manipulating ink with various tools (brushes, rags, stencils,etc.) Ink can be layered, color over color, and printed on the same paper in successive passes through the press. Because there are no permanent marks on the plate, it is not possible to create exact multiples of the image, each monoprint is different and unique and the artist may use one or more techniques to achieve the image that he or she wants to create.

“I love the monoprint medium,” she adds. “When I’m on the press,” Roberto explains, “I love working with the brightest ink colors. I enjoy trendspotting and antiquing, and fusing these concepts into a single design. I experiment with a variety of materials. For example, recently I found a most unusual netting that was used to hold together firewood. I used it on the press to create a beautiful flowing pattern” she adds.

LuAnn began painting and printmaking after the death of her mother as a way to get through her grief. After 6 months, she began to show her work and became familiar with the world of licensing art. Being an advertising professional, she easily made the addition to her business and www.LuAnnRoberto.com was born.