I’ve just taken delivery of my 3×5″ Gelli Arts Plate, which is the perfect size to have a go at a technique I wanted to test for my forthcoming Zentangle Inspired Art workshop. I mixed black acrylic with a slow medium in equal quantities and used a brayer to cover the plate evenly with the black paint. Working as quickly as I could, I scraped paint off with a rubber tipped tool to ‘etch’ the tangle design. Despite the speed at which I worked, the acrylic still dried, so by the end I was scraping into dried paint, and to transfer the monoprint to paper I needed to add a layer of matt multi medium over the dried paint. After everything had dried on the page, I added Distress Inks to colour. A fast and furious sample, but a technique I think I will try again, perhaps with Golden Open acrylics or even a waterbased printing ink.
Have a go at this technique, along with others, at my workshop on Easter Saturday.
On a separate note, it is worth having a look at my original image – which was taken with a camera – the gloss finished of the acrylic played havoc with the light… Whereas the scanned image above shows off the piece far better. There’s also some resist happening with the black and the multi-medium which adds to the texture.
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I promise this is the last page (for now) with the wooden block prints – just in case you’re getting bored… I’ve got enough done now to demonstrate what can be done with them at my Art Journal Session at the beginning of August. This one is a little more of a creative statement highlighting the quotation – I love how the Walnut Stain Distress Ink rubbed over the collaged speech bubbles has made them look grubby as well as making them recede into the background. Enough said, I think.
For a printable/downloadable photo tutorial