Showing posts with label printing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label printing. Show all posts

Sunday, March 03, 2013

Gelli Plate Surprise ...


Yesterday I decided to have a little fun with my newly-acquired 8x10 Gelli Printing Plate. This may come as a surprise to some of my creative friends, but I'm a bit of a doofus around new tools. I've watched other people magically creating amazing stuff with ease, then I've rushed out enthusiastically to buy whatever miracle toy they were playing with ... only to find the stuff I create is ... a hopeless muddle.

I'm very happy to report that my experience with the Gelli Plate is *not* one of those times. As near as I can tell it may well be idiot proof (Exhibit A: the collage above). With a minimum of tools, a variety of acrylic paints (some new and luscious, some old and cranky), some leftover divider tab sheets and about an hour, I created a generous stack of deliberate experiments and gorgeous happy accidents.

So ... what did I love? Each print doesn't need much paint, so it's very economical. Think that "clean up" is a drag? Don't clean up till the end! Yes, you can change colours as you go. See that collage above? I only cleaned up at putting away time. Don't like the first print you pull? That's okay, set it aside and print over it a second, third or fourth time till it can't take it anymore and decides to be gorgeous for you. Think you hate the final result? Not so fast. See that mottled green on the bottom row? I really hated it when I pulled it, but looking closely at it later I decided it was very nice indeed. And did I mention the no clean up till the end thing? Oh yeah ...

So ... paints ... I used whatever I had on hand. Mostly random acrylics, although my friend Rose recently gave me some super sparkly Dick Blick Glitter Watercolours, and while their pigment wasn't strong, the sparkle is very cool (and that's from a person who usually shuns glitter). The more liquid your paint the more prints you'll get from each inking and the easier it is to spread it around, but even my less liquid paints were fine, just took a bit more time to brayer them on evenly. Whatever the paint is, the first pull is usually fine, and if the paint seems too dry for a second pull, just lightly mist the plate. The green dots on the middle square in the collage were from a misted pull, and I love how they turned out.

Tools I used: stencils, foam stamps, a little graining tool, the core from a roll of skotch tape, a rubber brayer and a spritzy water bottle. I also taped a length of freezer paper to my table before I started - the Gelli Plate contains mineral oil, so it needs to be on something so you don't mark your table. Some people use a piece of glass or a teflon sheet. This also helps you if you want to rotate the plate while you're using it.

My other essential item (gleaned from watching various gelli vids on the net) is something to roll your brayer on after you've inked the plate. My choice of was an outdated copy of Leonard Maltin's movie guide. Let's face it, there's nothing more out of a date than a 20-year-old book of movie reviews. I suppose I could have torn out the pages and rolled on them, but I decided to just roll and turn the page. I figure I can throw it in my bag and take it to collage parties.

The table (post clean up). Poor Leonard! His reviews were never this colourful.

Well ... that's about it ... I just signed up for Carolyn Dube's Colorful Gelli Printing Workshop. I've been watching all the wonderful videos on her blog and I love her enthusiasm. In her last post she gelli'd her freakin' shoes (!). I'm looking forward to learning a ton more fun stuff to do with my Gelli Plate. I mean, if this is what I can create in an hour with *no real* knowledge, just imagine how far from a hopeless muddle I'll be with a little more practice.

Friday, May 06, 2011

Bookish and loving it ...

I've always loved books. I can't remember when I learned to read ~ certainly it was before I went to school ~ probably at age four or so. I know this because I have vivid memories of being bored out of my mind tracing 8" high fuzzy ABC's with my index finger in Grade One, and being seriously annoyed when I realized we weren't going to be given any *real* books until after lunch, or maybe even later.

I claim no particular genius in reading so early, it was most likely due to the fact that in my early years I lived in what we called "the bush", i.e. smallish dwellings in deep forests far from town, and without the benefit of television or (that I can recall), even radio. There were only limited options for self-amusement: go outside and play (which at some times in the year might result in freezing to death), make art (still doing that ~ plus ca change!), help with housework (um ... ick), and reading. Reading seemed the most reasonable of these, since constant art-making was not on the cards due to the shocking absence of craft stores in the deep forest. Reading had the added advantage that I could learn about the Great World Beyond, where I would (and eventually did) go. Even in the smallest of our dwellings, there was always a corner designated: The Library. It might only be a bookcase, but to us it was a Library. I didn't actually get my own public library card till I was 13 or 14 I think. But that's another story and completely unrelated to my reading habits.

Anyone who's been to my house can attest to my ongoing love of books. I *do* have a library card now, but I seldom borrow books. But only because I can't bear to give them back. It's like I form a bond with them ... a contract ... that having read them once, I will read them again, and again, and how can I do that if someone else has them? No ... better to buy them outright. Well, at least until you run into the problem we currently have - no more wall space for more bookcases. Sigh.

Meanwhile, back to the book that inspired this ramble ... or, why have I put a picture of Jonathan Safran Foer's book Tree of Codes here for you to see? I can't claim to have read it. I'm not sure if it's good. But it's definitely interesting. A book after my own heart. In order to find out why, I offer the following videos: public reactions, how it was made and Jonathan says.

In "how it was made" I was particularly touched by a scene midway (2:42) showing pages being hand-collated, a process I've been intimately involved with since I was 18 and continuing up to the present day. Oh, and the cutter shown at 2:33? I know my way around that, too. Granted, I spend much more time nowadays at a desk interacting with a computer (who doesn't?), but if push comes to shove (which it sometimes does), I can cut, collate and bind if needed. Maybe not on as grand a scale as the video, but hey - we can't all be big publishing houses, can we?

The video portrays my very familiar world in an almost romantic way ... the snow of little diecuts falling from the sky ... the tenderness of little suction cups feeding sheets into the press ... the lush musical score. And for all the times that I really really really do not want to go to work (constant art-making is much more fun), there is an ordered beauty to the printing process that makes me really happy too. And I wanted to share it with you.