(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’ll be able to relate to what’s been occurring over the previous few 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 strive embossed textures on card and use the gel plate to do that.

I notably preferred the concept 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 characteristic within the gentle 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 similar weight as a manilla doc folder. 

I wished to make use of this primary cardboard ‘plate’ as a take a look at piece earlier than I spent an enormous period of time with including particulars in. I began by stamping and embossing the ‘gentle rays’ straight onto the folder pondering 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 Pink 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 start line. So usually we use the gel plate for backgrounds and add to it so this actually made me take into consideration the chances of how detailed the cardboard plate ought to or should not be. For instance, I feel including embossed sea texture to the cardboard could be extra helpful than stamping on the gel plate.

Right here you’ll be able to see how a few of my paint acquired caught to the gel plate… this has acquired to be one of the irritating points with gel printing!!! There’s 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 season warmth earlier than I may 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 positively my greatest pal this week!

…what I did discover by doing a few follow 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 subsequent pull.