This week I was introduced to another way of gelli printing, one where texture can be created whilst still being able to produce quite exacting patterns.
In September I blogged about a similar, but slightly different method, and gave the steps I took. However, with that method a colour is placed down and, once dry, a second colour is rolled over the surface. This means that the purity of the first colour becomes polluted by the overlay colour. For example, if you put blue down in sections first and later roll yellow over it the result on the mixed areas is going to be some kind of green or, at best, blue with a green tinge. It’s hard to keep the true colour.
My new method should eliminate this problem and ensure the colours I lay down remain pure.
My first pieces gave me excellent colour results but the transfer of paint from gelli plate to paper was patchy. I realised that both layers of paint had to be fairly liquid so they didn’t dry out before pulling the print. I left the Matisse Structure paints aside and used either Matisse Flow or Atelier Interactive for both layers.
The paint application on the above 2 pieces was somewhat uneven but the transfer was much better. A definite improvement.
Both the colour and pattern transfer worked well on these pieces and I’m very happy with the results. Here’s the method:
- Using a brayer, apply paint across the entire gelli plate surface and lie a stencil over the top.
- Using a baby wipe, remove all the paint on the gelli plate surface showing between the gaps of the stencil.
- Keeping the stencil in place, roll a second colour over the stencil and gelli plate. This will fill up the gaps that were just cleaned with a second colour.
- Remove the stencil and place paper over the surface, pressing down to transfer paint to paper.
When the stencil is removed it ‘sucks’ up some of the paint trapped between it and the gelli plate and this creates a textural effect in those areas.
Interesting outcomes. I’m mulling over what comes next with my gelli plate.
TactualTextiles 