I am about to pull a print from the gelli plate. Paints, brushes, and various found objects…pressed leaves, buttons, lino blocks and so much more can be used to provide imagery in this mono printing process.
More found objects.
This is one of my favorite prints. Most of the paint had been removed from the plate (when printing previous prints). Consequently, this print resulted in pale purples and grays. I printed the purple butterfly directly onto the printed iris leaf.
Prints and more prints!
Sewing up the bird print using the Coil Spring binding pattern.
I will be teaching a pamphlet binding and gel printing workshop in March. Since I had not worked with this type of mono printing in a while; I decided to re-visit the technique. I completed a small series of prints, which I then used as covers for several pamphlet journals. It was loads of fun and I am excited to share these processes with my students during the upcoming workshop!
I use a brayer to spread the various colored paints (acrylic) onto the gelli plate. Here I put a bit too much paint on the plate. So, I simply rolled it onto a sheet of plexiglass until I removed enough from the gelli plate to get the desired consistency.
I used a cool color palette - purples, blues, and greens with a bit of black and gray. Here are several of the finished prints.
Notice how the butterfly image is the color of the paper. This happened because I pressed the relief block onto the pink and purple paints (removing them from the plate). Therefore the image printed the color of the paper when I pulled the print. I used a cover weight French paper.
I built up layers of patterned blues and blacks onto the gelli plate. Then before pulling the final print I pressed this bird relief block onto the black paint. I love the ghost-like quality of the image.
I let the prints dry and used several of them as covers for three section pamphlet journals. I was most pleased with the finished books.
Sewing, using the Triple Chain binding.
I am delighted with the completed panoply of pamphlets!
Beautiful prints resulted in beautiful pamphlet journals!