Valentine Exchange

With all of the gelatin monoprints I've done, I knew I needed to use them to make my Valentine for the North Redwoods Book Arts Guild Valentine exchange or I would never hear the end of it! I decorated the printmaking paper using silver printmaking inks and hand-cut heart stencils. The heart at the end of the tunnel is also a monoprint. I used a colored pencil to draw graphs from EKGs all over the paper and used a stencil brush and artistic blending chalks by Inkadinkado to highlight the heart cutouts. The structure came from Alisa Golden's Creating Handmade Books and is one of my favorite card structures because as you open the pages it reveals more and more interesting parts of the card.  The structure is also "self-displaying" because it stands upright enabling us to view the heart at the end of the tunnel. The Spanish poem was copied from a carved wooden fireplace in a little hotel in Taxco, Mexico during a wonderful vacation with my daughter and husband. 

Love Is All We Need

I have been experimenting with gelatin prints to determine how well they hold up when a second layer of a different medium is applied. No problem so far. I even sprayed a gelatin print with water and found that once they dry the prints really do stay put. They are also easy to run through a printer. This was printed using an Epson with a 90 degree feed. So! Don't be afraid of going back in and paint other things onto your prints. 
The stamps were made by my friend, Sandy, who will be teaching a stamp and stencil workshop at our next guild meeting. We made our own stencils and stamps in a Laura Wait workshop. Not only were they easy to make but there were more "us". Today Sandy spent some time volunteering at World Shelters in order to assist the earthquake victims in Haiti. Love to Sandy, Love to Haiti, Love to People Helping.

Valentine Playday

Today was a perfect day for making gelatin plate valentines: dreary, drippy, dank, depressing, dark. Two friends came over and we proceeded to take over the kitchen with paper, gelatin plates, inks, and papers. The kitchen lighting brightened our afternoon and the valentine experiments warmed our hearts! My husband is thrilled to have the gelatin out of the refrigerator even though he had to eat lunch in the living room. This print was created by my friend and uses a hand-cut stencil for the heart and is printed in red. She created a positive print overlay using a paper doily and pewter metallic Speedball ink. The metallic inks provide a nice shimmer.

I created two prints using a hand-cut stencil also, but the stencil borders were cut to fit inside of the gelatin plate. The first print was in purple (or red) and the final print overlays were used patterns from paper coffee cup protectors and silver metallic Speedball ink. 

This photo says it all. Three hours went by before we knew it and if it was raining outside, we didn't know it.

Fun Workshop

I had the sincere pleasure of teaching a group of book artists a few techniques for successful gelatin plate printmaking. I haven't taught an actual class since I retired from teaching mathematics at our local community college and I had to resist giving a quiz at the end of class. These artists didn't need a quiz because their work was just beautiful. Workshop details are on the North Redwoods Book Arts Guild blog.

I managed to get home just in time for our 6.5 magnitude earthquake. I've been through a number of them and this one really shook. We heard things hitting the floor and amazingly, nothing was broken. My sister's house in Eureka was really damaged, they had bookcases fall and crush things—fortunately not people or pets. A lot of her glass canned goods fell and broke; they were unable to clean them up because the water pipe was ruptured under the house. We were able to fill one of our big water containers from our rafting adventures and take it to Eureka to help. The city was mostly dark and people were walking in all directions—were they afraid to be inside or looking for help? I was raised in earthquake country but will never get used to them. This YouTube video may give you some idea of what it was like for people in Eureka:

Just Another Bit of Pear

The weather has been way too nice to stay inside printing. I did manage to mix some colors I like and I used one of my best discoveries for this image: a plastic mesh bag from Costco, used to hold a bunch of avocados! For the pear I used a brayer to roll black ink over a stencil. Rain is forecast for the rest of the week so it's back to printing. Such fun.

Brayers galore

I don't even remember when or where I bought this 4 inch brayer with its set of pop-out rollers; I've only recently realized what treasures they are. I know I've had them a number of years because I've used the acrylic roller for a Fimo clay workshop with Dayle Doroshow and the hard black rubber roller was used at a block printing workshop at the Newport Paper Arts Festival. They have been patiently waiting in one of my art drawers ever since—with a multitude of other supplies that will eventually have their day. Recently I have been using the tan, soft rubber roller for monoprints on gelatin plates. The black, soft foam roller also works with monoprints. I've recently added the 2 inch roller to the family, the wee one. From left to right the rollers are arranged in order of hardness with the hardest on the left and softest on the right:
a) acrylic roller b) hard rubber roller c) soft rubber roller d) soft foam roller.
The soft rubber roller and soft foam roller both work well with the gelatin plate which is very soft and can be damaged if cut into.

The inexpensive, disposable foam rollers do not work because they are too soft to pick up much ink and any ink they do pick up doesn't roll out well on the gelatin plate.  DO NOT use one of these for gelatin printmaking.

This is a block print of a cottonwood leaf from our ranch in Nebraska, done in 2004. I carved the design into a piece of wood and rolled Speedball water based ink over the block and pressed paper to the block. It is not considered a monoprint because I can make more prints...if only I could find the block. Sometimes you can get more than one print (called a ghost print) from your gelatin plate, but I would still consider it "one of a kind" and a monoprint.
While I like the results from block printing it required more work and planning. Right now in my ventures into the art world it seems more important to me to explore more spontaneous means of expression and gelatin plates really encourage me to do that. If I'm not happy with the image on the plate I just run the roller back over it. So, it's back to the kitchen for some more gelatin prints and coffee. My husband wants his kitchen counter back.

What a Pear We Are

For workshop information see December 21 posting.

When I am working with new inks or paints, one of the first things I do is paint a color wheel to see the range of hues and intensities. The colors of the Speedball printmaking inks are really intense, which I like. I also like the colors a lot. I'm not fond of the hues in a set of watercolor paints I have and rarely use them but then I favor certain grocery stores because I like the lighting and colors. The printmaking wheel inspired me to use a complementary color for the pear stencil. The background is similar to the previous monoprint I posted but the complementary color really makes it "pop". I used a smaller gelatin plate (not moldly) for the stencil. I have also discovered that inks pulled from gelatin plates are more translucent than I would have expected. The gelatin plate accepts very little ink compared to some of the other processes I've used. To create a more opaque layer I tried rolling ink directly on the paper and that works. My favorite colors are usually the results of tints, shades, and blending complements so that will be my next experiment. The blues and golds above were the result of tinting the primary colors. The orange of the stencil is from the tube.

Monoprint on Mold

For workshop information see December 21 posting.

My inspiration for today's monoprint came from  Linda Germain's gelatin prints. The grass was picked on my walk yesterday, I used a 2 inch soft rubber brayer on an old gelatin plate covered with mold. The mold creates the irregular circles and I applied uneven pressure on the brayer as I inked the plate. I also used an old spongy toe separator from a long-ago pedicure to make a few stamps in the blue ink, using a lighter blue. I like the complexity of the textures a lot!

Gelatin Monoprints

Gelatin play day with friends! Gelatin monoprints are a form of printmaking that requires no press and uses water-based inks. The printing plates are made from gelatin. Inks are applied to the gelatin plate, design elements are added and  then the print paper is pressed onto the plate and smoothed out with the hand. The finished product is considered a monoprint but it is possible to print a second or even third image. Prints can also be layered. It is not complicated, creative, inexpensive, and very easy to clean up.

Making Your Own Gelatin Plate:
1) Use a glass, plastic, or metal pan with a smooth bottom, non-porous bottom.  My favorite is a Pyrex pan 7 by 5 inches with a plastic lid. You don't want this to be too large, especially is you are a book artist.
2) Place the pan on a level surface and fill with cold water to the depth of 3/4 to 1 inch. Pour the water into a measuring cup to determine the amount of water you used.
3) Determine the amount of gelatin. For each cup of water you measured you will need 2 envelopes of Knox gelatin or 2 TBS good quality gelatin.
4) Pour half of the water into the pan and sprinkle with the gelatin. Let it swell until it looks like applesauce. Stir gently.
5) Boil the rest of the water and add to the gelatin applesauce. Stir slowly until the gelatin is dissolved.
6) Gently drag a paper towel or piece of paper across the top of the gelatin to remove bubbles.
7) Leave the gelatin pan on the table until it starts to set and then move it to the refrigerator until solid.
8) To use the plate, gently pull the gelatin away from the sides of the pan with your fingers. I had to use a thin spatula to help me release it from the pan. Place it on a movable smooth surface, like a cookie sheet or glass.


Applying the ink

We used Speedball water soluble printmaking ink and a soft, black foam, 4 inch brayer. Ink was rolled onto glass plates to coat the brayer and then gently applied to the gelatin surface. We rolled on multiple colors and created texture and design with various objects. We also created interesting images using leaves, stencils, string, bubble wrap, crumbled plastic wrap, lace, etc. You can rinse off the plate under the sink or just roll more ink over the previous inks. Make sure that you DO NOT ALLOW GELATIN TO GO DOWN THE DRAIN.  IT CAN PLUG THE DRAIN! 

First Designs
1) Leaves on inked gelatin plate, string added after photo was taken.

2) This is the first print on drawing paper.  Since the leaves remained on the gelatin plate, they blocked the ink from transferring to the paper, resulting in a negative print.

3) For the second print the leaves and string were removed. No additional inking was done; when the leaves were removed their imprint remained in the the original ink. The result was a delicate positive print. 

Second Designs
1) After applying ink to the plate, lines were gently drawn across the plate with a smooth paint palette. A pear shape was cut from a paper rectangle of freezer paper.  Then the paper rectangle was placed on the inked plate. Art paper was then pressed over the stencil resulting in a negative print.

2) The stencil was removed from the plate, no additional ink was added and art paper pressed on the plate resulting in a  positive print.

Third Design

Black ink was applied to the plate and I used a smooth paint palette to gently draw the design on the gelatin plate. Paper was then applied!  Finger-painting worked also!






For more detail on the above, please use the following links:
1) Making gelatin plates, printing, and making an accordion fold book:
Mary Taylor Art
2) Sites or blogs with examples of wonderful gelatin prints:
Artistic Dreamer 
Linda Germain