As my adventures in Gelli Printing continue, so does my enthrallment. And mind you, there are lots of unsatisfying results, but there are also always a few marvelous surprises. Lately am enjoying printing on colored Paper. The next few images show collage papers I have printed in the last few weeks. I do not consider them as finished pieces, but rather as papers I will use to make collages. Some may serve as backgrounds; others will be cut up or sewn on.
This one is rather psychedelic. It started out as a yellow sheet of paper. I don't always remember just how I get certain effects, as is the case here, but I think the bottom of a shot glass was involved.
I found the tie dyed effect here rather pleasing. I had rolled out stripes of color and pulled one print. Then I spritzed the remaining paint on the Gelli plate with a little water and pulled this ghost print.
Bright green paper with purple and teal paint are also pleasing to me in a painterly way. I already cut some of this print up for collage.
This effect comes from rolling a somewhat cylindrical piece of dried cholla cactus wood on the plate.
And here is one stitched 8 x 10 collage made from gelli-printed papers, as well as papers I tossed paint onto. I am getting more and more into sewing on paper. I have been apprenticing myself to collage these last 6 or 7 years since I retired. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes 10,000 hours to gain mastery in a field. Not counting my sporadic periods of making collages before I retired, I guess I have some 6,000 or 7,000 hours of practice under my belt at this point. So I still consider myself an apprentice. There is always more to learn! I have enjoyed watching the short how-to videos on the Gelli Arts website and find them to be much more enlightening than most of the YouTube presentations by amateurs. Gathering supplies for gelli printing is never-ending at this point. I find things in dollar stores, on the street and in my own backyard. Plastic packaging is often interesting. The only problem is the growing amount of storage space needed, ah well....
Sleep, Eat, Make Art, Repeat!
