Roger Crossgrove explored a number of techniques not popular at the time he undertook them. He didn't invent penlight photography or the watercolor monotype, but he persistently developed the techniques and made excellent use of them in his compositions. His persistence and exploration further developed the techniques. Crossgrove combined hybrid printmaking techniques with varying subject matter. In his hands, these evolved into distinctive styles, with their own richness and texture. 

Watercolor Monotype

The watercolor monotype is an area of deep exploration in Crossgrove's work. Many artists today use some form of the technique, yet Crossgrove's results have an ease and compositional cohesion that seem unusual.

A monoprint or monotype is a sort of hybrid between painting and printmaking. The artist paints or draws an image on an impervious surface, like glass, plastic, stone or metal. The image is worked with traditional mark-making tools like brushes and sticks. A sheet of paper is laid on the surface, picking up the image, in reverse. In this way, a single (mono-) print is made from a unique painting or drawing. Often, traces of the original image remain, which allow the artist to add media and re-work the remaining image for a new unique print, or to simply take another, much drier print from the remaining media. Monotype media can be any liquid-based pigmented media; some use oils, some very stiff printmaking inks, some watercolors. The results can vary widely from one kind of media to another. The terms monotype and monoprint are used interchangeably here, but during Crossgrove's long career, the term monotype was used most often. 

Crossgrove used a formula for a medium that was introduced by Dwight Kirsch, a printmaker and teacher of Roger's from Nebraska. The formula makes use of glycerin and other materials that offer a slightly gelatinous or viscous quality. This medium can easily mix with watercolor and gouache paints. Crossgrove eventually favored gouache, which give a more substantial opaque impression, especially when layered. Crossgrove experimented with the wetness of the surface, the dilution of the paints, the thickness of the paper (usually a soft Japanese rice paper), and the thickness of the paint and media. He kept two spray bottles near the work surface; one containing water, and one containing the pre-mixed glycerin medium. With those, he could constantly modify the hydration and dilution of the image surface, extending the time available for image-making. His typical tools for making marks were Chinese or Japanese watercolor or sumi brushes. The looseness of the medium and the wetness of the impervious surface allowed a limited control over image; but fine detail and tight rendering were not within that range. Crossgrove's work celebrated the physical gesture of the body, the impulse, the quick and lively mark of a wet brush and the free, intuitive hand. It became a perfect extension of Crossgrove's clear facility with a loose, archetypal gesture and purposeful, evocative line. 

Crossgrove took advantage of felicitous compositions when preparing to revisit the image-making surface. With his hydration tools and easily-recharged media, he could consider the traces left from a previous image as a starting point for a new one. All his work recognized the potential for reuse, layering, re-work and improvisation. In the case of monotypes, often the remaining media was sufficient to make a second print. Occasionally, he used a technique that might have started as a mistake: a sheet of paper might be laid down unevenly, with bubbles and gaps in the impression, or a wrinkled and crumpled sheed would be used. The resulting impression could include a lot of blank spots and voids. But what was not picked up in the initial impression remained, so a second impression could be had with the original intensity, but almost as a negative twin or complement to the first image. At other times, Crossgrove might return to a theme such as a torso, series of athletes, or still-life, and make several impressions drawing more or less closely from the first. These series have been nicely shown as panels in a triptych or in a series of related pieces. Often the contrast, colors, intensity and texture of the different related impressions vary enough that they show a relationship only through composition, but there is something gratifying about the echoing imagery. Several of these series have been collected together. 

Pastel over watercolor monotype

Crossgrove's early involvement with pastels had an interesting foundation. Almost all the pastel drawings, however finished, loose, rich or spare, were drawn over a base of a watercolor monotype. Unframed pieces show on the back the original image of the monotype, and the drawings often depart completely from those. Many of these pastel drawings are sumptuous and emphatic compositions, which makes it seem strange for the monotypes to have been used at all. Crossgrove tended to be economical with materials, especially early in his career, and he did not avoid the ancient artist's technique of adding layers to works or simply developing new works over old ones. In the case of the pastel drawings, perhaps it was the initial gesture that Crossgrove wanted to preserve from a monotype, which then could be fully expressed with the saturated colors of pastel. Some of these works show and even feature the vigorous watercolor marks. His later work with monotypes using gouache paints, often achieve the intense color quality of pastel. It is possible that he discovered that pastels were no longer necessary, with a firmer control of watercolor media. In any case, Crossgrove's period of work in pastel was limited to 1948-1975. His pastels remained after that in their case, in his cavernous attic studio, among a fantastic array of props and materials. 

Penlight Photography

Crossgrove began photographing models after a failed life-drawing session. He deplored his drawings, and his model suggested simply taking photographs. But over a period of possibly 4 years, while experimenting with still-lifes, combinations of models, props, drapes, and varied light sources, he realized the possibility of timed exposures. In his most iconic time-exposure photographs, the varied light sources and experimental techniques show in the mysterious, abstract, painterly results. Crossgrove accumulated a series of customized penlights, flashlights, and gels that allowed him various amounts of focus, intensity and color in making tracings and gestures with light. He used these light pens in combination with raking spotlights and floodlights, adding imaginary detail to scenes, such as bones, halos, or fireworks. Photographs show shadow, highlight, skin, silhouette, the drawn line, and the sketched, gestural trace all at once, in compositions that might recall Renaissance sculpture, Muybridge photographs, disco, bullfights, Warhol, or the theatrical gestures of classical dancers. As with the monotypes and pastels, Crossgrove's ability to skate on the line between the specific and the ethereal is evident.