Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Oooooh! Groovy!

Ever since I got Rayna Gillman's book, 'create your own hand-printed cloth', I've been wanting to find time to experiment with several of the techniques she describes so well. One of the techniques is gelatin plate printing, and it's been on my 'to do' board for months. Then when I got the Aug/Sept issue of Quilting Arts magazine and read Frances Holliday Alford's article 'Flight of fantasy - A gelatin monoprint process', I got excited all over again at the possibilities of using this process. Well, today I finally got my act together and have begun experimenting. I created 6 prints using various fabric paints, added some resists (thread, torn newspaper), and even played with a ghost print that produced a design left from a paper towel I used to blot the paint! I'm totally hooked now, and can't wait to do some more, maybe coming up with some idea in advance about what I want and how I will use the results. Meanwhile, here are some pictures of today's first steps...
Here's the gelatin plate after I pulled the prints. I understand that I can leave the paint and just add to it to create more visual interest, so I'm trying it that way this time.
These are the first six prints. Bottom left is the first print, top left a ghost print from the same paint. Lower middle - more paint was added and thread arranged on top to create some resist.
Upper middle - ghost print with torn newspaper added. Lower right - more paint added. Upper right, ghost print after plate was blotted with paper towel.
Here's a closeup of the ghost print with paper towel design.

2 comments:

Vicki W said...

What fun!

Unknown said...

Looks like so much fun. I keep telling myself that the first chance I get, I'll play with gelatin plates, and then something else comes along that needs immediate attention.