I did an afternoon of experiments at The Workers Gallery last week, trying out different combinations of inks and papers on a Gelli Arts gelatine printing plate. I want to print papers for collage. I did some basic experiments a few weeks ago and I wanted to do something a bit more advanced to see what the technique is capable of.
I used two different types of pigment – Caligo Safewash ink (oil-based) and Liquitex paint (acrylic) and two papers to print on – Daler Rowney cartridge paper and Hosho Japanese tissue. I also used ripped tissue paper and fruit net bags as stencils to add variation to colour and texture. I took two prints from each inking – a full colour one and a paler ‘ghost secondary image.
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- Caligo plate 1 full-colour image on Hosho paper
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- Caligo plate 1 ghost image on Hosho paper
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- Caligo plate 2 full-colour image on Daler Rowney paper
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- Caligo plate 2 ghost image on Daler Rowney paper
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- Liquitex plate full colour image on Daler Rowney paper
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- Liquitex plate ghost image on Daler Rowney paper
The Caligo inks had greater translucency and depth but in future I’ll try the Liquitex with a medium to thin it out a bit and see if I can get a more translucent paint. I prefer the Hosho paper, it gives much more luminosity than the Daler Rowney cartridge. The stencils – tissue and fruit net – worked really well and it was exciting when I took the paper off the plate to see what randomness endued.
Amazing. It’s the first time I felt beauty and energy from the look of a fruit net.
Hahaha thank you 😀 Bubble wrap is good too
Thank you – that’s a lesson to me. I feel like I have been judgmental about some industrial materials and just thought that they are unseemly. But perhaps the beauty was just waiting to be recognized.
It’s great to reuse them and they bring a strange modernity to traditional materials and techniques
Stunning!
Thank you 😀
I had great fun at my gelli printing worshop the other week. Two results I found useful was spraying an almost paintless plate with water and then printing it off . Great for backgrounds for over-printing and for sketching over. Unlikely as it seemed I found that metallic acrylic paint, silver in particular, very useful in a mix of stronger colours. Believe me I am not a ‘metallic’ person so no one was more surprised than me!
Oooh thanks for the tips. I have some metallic acrylics