This project grew out of a canvas (25 cm square) that I had collaged with various papers, added a bit of blue paint over the tissue paper, then abandoned. I also wanted to incorporate ginkgo leaves using this dried one as a model.
I started by coating the entire canvas in white paint, spraying it with water, then dabbing off with paper towel so that it all has a unifying layer of white but the layers below are still visible.
At this point, I broke the 'rules' of gelli plate printing! You may read that you shoudn't use water-based paint (or ink) on your gelli plate because it beads: But you can use that to your advantage! For example, here is Colourcraft's Aztec metallic paint brayered on the gelli plate and a print pulled from it. I love the effect it gives!
I decided to use this effect to give interest to my leaves. I brayered some paint as above, then left it about an hour to dry on the gelli plate (water based paints take longer to dry on the gelli plate than acrylic paints). I then added some dots of Magenta and Yellow Acrylic paint and brayered these across the dried metallic paint and immediately pulled the print on some heavy weight paper.
The result has the colours merged to a lovely warm colour along with the dots of metallic paint which has been lifted from the plate in a random pattern and also has texture: It is difficult to see in the photo but the little golden spots stand proud of the colour below. This could be used for so many things!
While the paint had been drying on the gelli plate, I stenciled the canvas with white Soft form relief paste and left that to dry.
Once everything was dry, I mixed the same colours with a touch of blue to make a slightly darker shade and used this to paint the sides and edges of the canvas, pulling the colour in and over the stencilled areas.
I cut out some ginkgo shaped leaves from my gelli plate print and used a wooden skewer to bend the leaves and add texture before gluing them down.
I hope this has given you some ideas for using your paints and the gelli plate in different ways: Have fun experimenting!
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