Art Journal Page: Hexagonal Monoprinting

Posted on 8th August 2018 by perfectly4med

It has been a little while since I have had my gel plates out, so I thought it was time to play a little with monoprinting into my journal. The experimentation was also inspired by the delivery of several texture printing plates made from rubber from Carabelle Studio. These are designed to be used with gel plates, and have text the right way round rather than a mirror image as found on rubber stamps. This means that text is monoprinted the right way round, and if used as background stamps in art journals, for example, it’s the wrong way round. The texture plates are very easy to use – just lay them across a painted gel plate, lift and then print with the gel plate.

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Art Journal: Gelli Tag Book

Posted on 25th July 2017 by perfectly4med

It’s been a while since I have played with my Gelli mono printing plate, and inspired by the work of Birgit Koopsen and the latest copy of Somerset Studio featuring tag art, I set to. Twenty or so monoprinted tags later, I had the basis of a new art journal – a Gelli Tag Book.

With a quick cardboard cover, book binding tape and a few quotes (and several days later) my journal is complete. Overprinting and underpainting, outlining hand drawn typography create a cohesive whole.

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Art Journal Page: Kindness is like snow

Posted on 4th December 2015 by perfectly4med

I’ve been forced by circumstances this week to not have a creative outlet, and I’ve come to realise that’s not a good idea! I’ve snatched time though, today, to practice the Gelli Plate technique I’ll be teaching in my Art Journaling Session on Monday evening. There will be spaces available – if you’d like to come, just get in touch.

[Monoprint panels using Chipped Sapphire/Stormy Sky Distress Paints and white acrylic paint; background from cleaning the brayer; text in Posca white acrylic marker.]

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ZIA on other surfaces: monoprinting

Posted on 2nd February 2015 by perfectly4med

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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Gelli Print Trio – New Home Cards

Posted on 15th April 2013 by perfectly4med

I needed to stay awake yesterday evening, so turned off the TV, got off the sofa and disappeared down the garden to the studio. A couple of friends have recently moved house, so I decided to make them new home cards, which took about an hour (including tidying up after, which I’m determined to keep doing!):

The backgrounds are mono prints using my Gelli Arts printing plate, layering up lots of different acrylic paint colours through stencils, sequin waste and removing paint with bubble wrap and foam stamps. I overprinted with white acrylic using the Claudine Hellmuth ‘Dwelling’ foam stamp, then outlined with her clear stamp set and Archival Jet Black ink. The sentiment is from Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous ‘Simple Sayings’ [CMS155] printed in Archival Jet Black and mounted on background offcuts to tie it all together. I outlined areas using a Signo white gel pen (fine tip) just to help define some of the detail.

College Term 4 – Painting – Week 3

Posted on 6th October 2012 by perfectly4med

It’s monoprint week, using oils. This is a completely new technique for me: paint onto glass with oil paints, and then press a damp sheet of paper down onto it to make the print. Not sure that it will become a favourite technique – I prefer using a gelatin plate and waterbased colour, but I guess I’m still a beginner! As before, I’m working from my collection of beads, and each print is 15x15cm. First image in the pair is the oil painting on glass, second is the print.

I’m quite pleased with the improvement – partly from making sure the paint was a little thinner on the plate, and the paper slightly damper to make the print. I particularly like the iridescence I managed to get on the last purple bead – I included all the colours I’d used on the other beads.