Gel Plate Printing, Second Try

Typically  I stick to whatever DIY version of an item or a process that's working for me. But in the case of homemade printmaking, I went ahead and bought better supplies. I've been having so much fun making monoprints on the kitchen table — it seems pretty clear that this is more than just an experiment, and is turning into an actual hobby.

Something more durable than the DIY gelatin plate would last longer and not require me to keep making it over and over in the fridge. And as much as I wanted to keep the entire thing as cheap as possible, I was really struggling to get a smooth layer of paint on the gel plate with just that brush and cheap dollar store black paint.

So I looked online for alternatives, and weighed price vs. not-shittiness for the three bare-minimum items that homemade printing seems to need: a gel plate, black acrylic paint, and a brayer to roll it on.

The Speedball brayer seemed to be well rated, and their version of the gel plate was a reasonable price.

I also got some Liquitex Basics Mars Black paint, having used it before and liking how it was just a little more fluid than a regular tube of acrylic paint.

One of the other things I bought, on the recommendation of the YouTuber “Nitsa Creative Studio”, was a sheet of hard acrylic to place the gel plate on. Not only does this protect one side of the plate, but it also means that a loaded plate can be picked up and used as a giant stamp.

I can think of a lot of instances where that might be easier than trying to place the paper over the plate itself — for example, if I were printing onto fabric, or a large sheet of paper, or a big canvas.

I had loads of fun trying out the gel plate with the black paint, as well as some white gouache, and purple and turquoise and gold craft paints. When I get any new tool, I tend to just throw everything I already own at it, and see how it works.

I had some ideas in mind for what I wanted the prints to look like — but as usual, everything took a turn. Real art is not what ideas you come up with. It's about how well you recover and keep going when your original concept doesn't work.

I'll make a whole post soon about magazine image transfers, and how bloody hard they are to do. But a few of the ones I made struck me as awesome. These are both from Vogue.

I also experimented with multi-layer prints, scratching layers off the second plate of paint to leave room for the first layer of print to show through.

Another unexpected development was how great the ghost prints (the second print made off a plate) looked when placed on a blank sheet of kraft paper.

I wish the gold showed up better in these photos!

I was happy enough with these five prints to hang them on the wall by my bed. I might make it a gallery wall while I'm here — it's motivating to wake up and see what I've made.

I've since read that even better results can be gotten from the Speedball gel plate if you use traditional monoprint inks, so I might save up for some of those and try them, too.