Materials:

• paper (any — for drafting, drawing, office) or plastic;
• paint (gouache / acrylic);
• brush;
• gel pen or a pen with ink.

Have you ever been brooding when looking at a wallpaper pattern or a wall painted with a hand of a lazy workman, who thought that leveling surface before painting was absolutely useless? Existing and non-existent beasts and fairy-tale countries are emerging in your imagination out of the irregularities, roughness and strange lines; in general, all what give out us our subconsciousness (sometimes unexpectedly).

But for these exercises with surfaces, your imagination can be developed in a more aesthetically pleasant way — monotype or print method. This method refers to graphics and is accessible for everyone, from toddlers to adults (importantly, for those who aren't being much serious), adult girls and boys. For me, monotype has become an inexhaustible source of creative and self-expression ideas!

Less words, more work!

Paint can be diluted with water to a semiliquid state (not the whole bottle, just the top layer).

Apply the paint in any order (quick enough so they don't dry, use relatively dense layer). It's better to take a dense sheet of paper so that it didn't get soak.

Cover the composition, if I may say, with the second sheet of paper.

Press slightly.

Remove the paper. It's better to remove it with a sharp movement, starting from one edge. Have an experiment: remove the sheet with an angular displacement, the image will be more interesting.

Repeat the step 3-4 times to get different prints (this can add new bright spots on the original image because each imprint mixes the colours). Here's the result.

You can get the prints from the surface of a plastic or glass (I used acrylic glass). The paint should be thick enough not to roll down in drops on the surface.

Next — the best part! See the prints from all sides and find images on them for further rendering. That's what happened to me (look carefully, you'll have great ideas).

'A Bird' (an acrylic glass imprint, note the feather effect).

And here's another picture, horizontal — I saw a snail, vertically — a mushroom... Which to choose? Yes, this happens sometimes.

The snail came to my liking, and I started drawing it (with a black gel or ink pen). In series, I applied the basic contours, then painted the blank spaces black (overall along the main lines of the picture, and then just outline and emphasize different details — like spots).

And the ready work. The last thing to do is to fit a mat, frame, and you can hang it on the wall.

Here are some more examples:

The Mushroom Kingdom

Elephant and...

The Cranberry Hunter (outlined it with black gouache instead of a pen).

Pierrot (outlined with gouache, too).

Assol. Lifelong Waiting.

Develop your imagination, be creative, good luck to you!

Olga Mo