Advancing in the Lessons

Gel plate, then collage, then gel plate and touch up

Same order as above

Gel plate printing 3 times, then collage, then gel plate and touch up, pen work

Collage, gel plate, and a ton of touch up

Hot mess. Collage, then gel plate, then gave up

collage, then gel plate, then repairing a lot

The six papers above are what I submitted for review to Jane Davies for Lesson 5 in her Gel Plate collage class. I have to tell you, this class has made me stretch myself, go beyond my comfort zone and want to keep trying. It is not easy. I only like one of the above a lot, and that is number 3 down from the top. Oddly enough, that was one of the pieces I considered trashing before the final gel plate application. Once I started to play with it, I fell in love with the design and colors.

The process that Ms. Davies is teaching us is long. This is not a quick "do a journal page" type of work. You have to think about placement on the plate, what you want to mask or save from paint, how many layers of paint, etc. Once you get to the end of printing, there is touch up and a lot of it. For example, in number 3, I did NOT have a clear white ground behind the 3 masked shapes. So out came the Golden Fluid Acrylic white paint, and I kept laying that down until satisfied. I knew I wanted to retain the ladder image to the left from a Stencil Girl stencil. That had to stay muted, but visible. The 3 shapes still were not popping out. Jane told us to stick with the same palette throughout our pieces, so it appeared to be a collection. One of my colors was Quinacridona/Nickel Azo Gold. It is transparent and a gorgeous shade of gold brown. What I discovered is that paint can intensify the colors underneath. In number 3, the lines were a medium blue cut from a previous gel print. The paint turned those broad lines into a subtle blue/green that just pops.

I will be doing more of these. Bought some of the Strathmore Mixed Media paper pads on sale. This is 140lb. paper, and holds up to repeated printing well.

One note. In the last piece above, the darker papers are from a Hungarian book that Klara sent me last year for use in my work. It is very old, and I put down a good layer of Matte Medium from Golden to adhere the paper. On top and on the bottom, and let it dry overnight. The antique paper came up, 3 times, on the edges. So. If you have collage papers you want to use that are extremely dry and fragile like this was, one coat of Matte Medium is not going to hold it. I now know to layer the medium on, and let it dry between applications. Learn from my mistakes. (Hi Klara!)

Thanks for stopping by.
Linda