mono printing

I decided to go back to mono printing as it helps a lot with development of imagery as it forces me to think simpler in terms of colour and shape so I can end up with simple yet bold imagery.
I spent ages cutting up lots of dinosaur stencils - I only chose four dinosaurs but did them in varying sizes as I want to convey a sense of scale within the imagery.

I tried out bigger prints first:

But it wasn't working as well as I wanted - the surface was just too big, the ink kept drying on the big stencils, so the paper wasn't taking it well.
So I tried on a smaller board:

The smaller prints worked better, but it still wasn't printing as smooth as I wanted - I think it was the paper as it had a shiny side which wasn't absorbing the ink very well. It was quite frustrating as the stencils kept ripping as well - I didn't manage to get many good prints where I tried to make a composition. Although I could use some of the singular dinosaur prints digitally in the book rather than try and make more compositions. I have lots of stencils I didn't use so I might do some more prints - maybe use different paper?
Some bits did come out quite nicely but I think the problem is that I am expecting too much from mono printing - I am trying to make finished compositions but mono printing is an experimental process - I had this same problem last year with my George Orwell prints. I think if I want to carry on with printing, I should make an effort to try screen printing, I haven't done it since first year so the thought of it is quite daunting as I have forgotten everything. But I think the shapes and colours I have been working with will translate really well onto screen print. 

There were some bits that I really liked:

The plant imagery came out well, with really dense ink. I like the white line that has frames each element, it makes each bit really stand out. 

Although I was wanting the colour to come out really vividly, I like the faded ones too - I feel like this aesthetic will be effective when depicting fossils and imagery faded into rocks. Although mono printing isn't good for creating final imagery, it does create some really nice textures which work well for this topic.