Monday, December 30, 2013

More gelatin prints

I worked on more prints today. It flowed a little faster, now that I got the basic process down. I still had several happy surprises.  These first two I used the elephant stencil I made. the one on the left is the ghost print which I like a lot. The one on the right was pulled first and is much more graphic.






This set of bird prints was done together. On both of them I did a second print of the bird over the first one (which came out white) because I thought the big empty white space left by the bird stencil was too stark.


 This one is the first pull from the plate. The ghost print came out really nice but I think I may draw on it first before I post it. I really like this process. right now I'm just using some leftover  Speedball Inks. they are water based and clean up easily. I'm looking forward to trying acrylic in a few days.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

So my experiment with making a gelatin plate for printing went pretty well. I got my information from Linda Germain's website Printmaking without a Press. I really found her videos to be super helpful. This first photo shows how the gelatin looks when it's added to the cold water- kinda clumpy like mashed potatoes.

This photo shows the bubbles that form on the surface after you add the boiling water to dissolve all the clumps of gelatin. You are supposed to skim off all the bubbles.
This one shows the gelatin in a 9" x 12" cake pan with plastic wrap underneath. That was supposed to make it easy to get out the gelatin plate when it hardened - which it did. but it also left deep ridges where the plastic wasn't perfectly smooth. And I didn't get every single bubble off the surface - which later gave me some blemish like imprints.

Here are a few prints. I did a whole bunch and learned something with each one. I'll keep you posted as to my progress.



Friday, December 27, 2013

Mixed Media Inspirations 8" x 10" watercolor, pen and ink, acrylic.

Well it's taken about an hour and a half to finally figure out what was going wrong with my blog and fix it! I was sure I'd have to start all over and I sure didn't want to loose all the great blogs I follow. So phew! I am glad that's settled. I have been promising to share some of the inspiration mixed media paintings I worked on this fall. Sorry it took so long but I couldn't access my blog. I am starting some new experiments today using a gelatin plate and some hand made stencils. I'll post that soon. I hope everyone had a blessed, peaceful Christmas.