(Gel) Printing {by Floss Nicholls} on the PaperArtsy Weblog

Hello everybody

I might prefer to share with you my successes and frustrations with gel printing and hope you possibly can relate to what’s been occurring over the previous couple of days right here in my workshop!

A collagraph, for these of you who do not know, is the place you utilize a textured plate that holds various quantities of ink/paint to print completely different tones. I wished to attempt embossed textures on card and use the gel plate to do that.

I significantly favored the thought of utilizing the scribble textured line for the sunshine ray popping out of the lighthouse and the small circles for the ocean particulars on ESA15, and the SHINE YOUR LIGHT wording as a function within the mild ray with the “blocks” above these phrases for use as rocks on the base of the lighthouse on ESA41.

So the very first thing I needed to do was to switch the picture onto some card to chop out for the plate.  I used and old-fashioned e-book cowl. It’s the identical weight as a manilla doc folder. 

I wished to make use of this primary cardboard ‘plate’ as a check piece earlier than I spent an enormous period of time with including particulars in. I began by stamping and embossing the ‘mild rays’ straight onto the folder considering that the raised space would not be too dissimilar to the lighthouse peak. 

I used a make up sponge so as to add color into the smaller areas: I used Heavy Cream for the sunshine ray and Crimson Lipstick for the components of the lighthouse physique. I stamped some element onto the gel plate and allowed that to dry.  

I wished to make use of the cardboard collagraph as the place to begin. So usually we use the gel plate for backgrounds and add to it so this actually made me take into consideration the probabilities of how detailed the cardboard plate ought to or should not be. For instance, I believe including embossed sea texture to the cardboard could be extra helpful than stamping on the gel plate.

Right here you possibly can see how a few of my paint obtained caught to the gel plate… this has obtained to be one of the crucial irritating points with gel printing!!! There may be often an excessive amount of paint utilized in areas when this occurs. Thinner layers work higher. I additionally discovered that as a result of I used to be engaged on my 12″ x 14″ gel plate, my layer of cloud 9 acrylic paint was drying in the summer time warmth earlier than I might pull the print. Fortunately, utilizing a few drops of PaperArtsy drying retarder within the paint slowed the drying course of and made for a smoother print pull. That is undoubtedly my greatest good friend this week!

…what I did discover by doing a few observe runs is that the cardboard plate had a greater final result every time as a result of with every use, the paint that was pulled off the gel plate stayed on it and helped the following pull.