More on Printmaking with Gelatin Plates

On Wednesday I had a couple of artsy friends over to make gelatin prints.  This is where you pour a thick slab of unflavored gelatin and use it as a printing plate.  You roll ink on with a rubber brayer.  I used Creatix Monotype Ink, which is water-based. After ou ink your plate, you wipe ink off in various spots with Q-tips and makeup sponges and what have you.  You can mask certain areas so that they will print white.    You can use more than one color on the plate or you can print several different plates on one piece of paper. Anyway, it's a fun process, a not very exact process (it's hard to have registration marks for various colors), etc.  But fun on a winter day.  If you've been having to do a lot of exacting work, this is a nice vacation from that.

You can see the other posts I did on making gelatin prints here and here and here.   If you want to learn more, Linda Germain's site Printmaking Without a Press is a stellar resource. 

When I was taking pictures I noticed my browning Christmas wreath in the background.  The Christmas snowmen have gone, leaving other art dolls I usually have on the mantel looking like they are afraid of he wreath.   Hmmmm.  Maybe I should get rid of that!



~ Dixie Redmond

3 comments:

Sarah said...

These look like they would make very interesting backgrounds for some collage type work. Maybe some 3 dimensional figures?

Dixie Redmond said...

Sarah - they would be EXCELLENT for collage. I didn't use expensive paper this time around because it was a *process* day. The idea is to do some things and pay attention to how you did it and THEN use the good paper. ;-) Newsprint takes the ink beautifully. But I want to experiment on cloth as well.

Unknown said...

love the quilt in the background Happy Printing


"Do not let what you cannot do
keep you from doing what you can do."

John Wooden