Mastering the Layers, week 1

I really like gel printing!  I like the surprise factor of never knowing exactly what the print will look like.  Some of my prints I love.  Some, not so much.

Here are the prints I made during the first week's worth of lessons:

After I did the first day's foundational lesson, I kept playing.

These 3 prints were made after I discovered what happens when you try to make mud.  I wanted beige paint and knew I could make it by mixing the primary colors and white.  I mixed the colors on  a gel plate and then cleaned my brayer on a piece of paper.  What was cleaned off the brayer did not look beige.  I wanted to see if I could duplicate that effect purposely.  So again I put red, blue, yellow paint dabs on a gel plate, mixed them with the brayer, added white.  Voila, a pretty beige, at least that's how it looked on the plate. I added a favorite stencil and pulled off some excess paint.

These are the surprising prints.  Not very beige!

Day 2:

Grungy prints

Day 3:

 

Paint and stencil.

Paint, a piece of ribbed plastic, foam stamps.

I really like these prints.  There's a certain control, like maybe I could duplicate this.

The white and orange 6x6 gel plate in the corner is waiting for me to add something else,

though I don't know exactly what it will be.

Day 4:  Q.  What happens when you add lots of colors to the same gel plate?

 plate 1 --  first pull left, ghost print right

plate 2 -- first pull left, ghost print right

A.  Some interesting prints!

I'm using up a lot of old craft paint.  You know the kind -- on sale for 50c a bottle or 3/$1.  I've had some of it for a long time and it's time to use it up.  Not high quality paint, but it does make for some interesting results:  When I made this I hadn't figured out how to get less paint to come out, so these prints took a looong time to dry; if the paint isn't fully shaken it comes out separated; and the brayer slips and slides around if I'm not careful.

Day 5:  Q.  What do you do if you have an ugly or uninteresting print?
A.  Add more color and pattern!

 I made this print for the grunge lesson.

I thought I might improve it.

This looks less interesting than the original.

Sometimes "fixing" a print does not make it better.

And sometimes it does!

I love how vibrant this print it.

The camera didn't capture it all, but the background has a lot of very interesting green bits.

I learned about gel printing about a year ago when I watched a video on the blog at Joggles.com, where they sell the Gel Press printing plates.  Last October I saw that Carolyn Dube was teaching a gel printing class at Art-is-You, and it seemed the perfect time to try out this new technique. What a great introduction!

Mastering the Layers is Carolyn's 3 week online course which is greatly expanding my understanding of print making, how to use a gel plate, and, because it's Carolyn, FUN!