Magical Mini Books

Head over to the Gelli Arts® blog for my latest post and tutorial "Magical Mini Books"

Excellent Weather for Mono-Printing...Not

The best weather for mono-printing with the Gelli Arts® gel plate is a cold rainy day. Winter days like this mean the paint dries slowly and you have plenty of time for mark-making. Unfortunately today in Perth is over 40C and it's almost impossible to make good gel prints. My paint was drying almost instantly on the plate. I decide to embrace this and use techniques where I deliberately let paint dry on the plate. I didn't have to wait long!

All these prints are made the same way on the 12 by 14 inch plate. First a colour (or a mixture of colours) is rolled onto the plate and textured. By the time this is done the heat has made the paint nearly dry and pulling a print is very disappointing. The trick is to just leave the paint until it's bone dry and then use PanPastels to add more colour in any areas where there is no paint. The next step needs to be done super fast in this weather: A very thin layer of white paint is rolled over the top and the paper immediately placed on top and rubbed down. Now here's the trick (it took me AGES to work this out!)....do not take the paper off right away. Leave it until the paint is TOTALLY dry. About 5 minutes in this heat but you could leave it for hours if you wanted to.

I know you're thinking that the paper gets stuck to the plate, which it would do if you tried this with a single paint layer. What seems to happen is the second layer of white paint acts like a glue between the dried paint/pastels and the paper. The dry paint/pastel makes a barrier between the paper and the plate. Its important to make sure that all the paint has some pastel over it to fill in any tiny gaps in the paint layer. The paper doesn't stick to the plate but it does stick to the dry paint and the pastel. When you pull the paper off your gel plate is almost totally clean!

I'm aiming to show a forest reflected in a lake. perhaps a bush-fire is raging through the trees? You can see I got better at this as I went along, these were the first 2 I tried.

Of course I'm going to have to try this on fabric! Watch this space.

Gelli® and PanPastel® Landscapes

Head over to the Gelli Arts® blog to see my latest collaboration post using PanPastels® there's a tutorial video too. Enjoy!

Gelli Arts® DIY Printing Kits

Head over to the Gelli Arts® blog for my latest blog post and 3 new videos using the DIY printing kits.

A Selection of Projects

Well what a wild ride the last couple of months have been - I'm glad to see the back of them! Now the chaos has calmed a little I've had time to get back to some art. As usual I have several projects going on at the same time. Above is an experiment with quilting first and then painting the fabric after. It's mounted on an 8 by 8 canvas.

My daughter has been taking a jewellery making class. I just had to join in too of course. Here is a very strange and scary character I made using some of the jewellery making techniques.

I've been working on several projects for Gelli Arts®. These are due to come out over the next couple of months, I'll be sure to let you know when. Whilst I was working on those projects I also had a play with printing onto fabric and adding extra colour with Inktense pencils.

Tribute to Grenfell - Art Quilt

I finally get to show you my art quilt "Tribute to Grenfell" which is on display until 27th October in the "Stitched and Bound" exhibition at the Zig Zag Gallery in Kalamunda.

On the evening of 14th June 2017 the world watched in horrified fascination as 72 people lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower fire. Eyewitness testimony described the terror as flames raced up the 24 storey building. This emotional, depressing piece is a tribute to those who lost their lives.

This piece was made with felt and organza and quilted with eyewitness testimony, machine-stitch lettering. The piece was then melted and burnt just like the building.

Exhibition - Peregrinations of a Citizen Botanist

Peregrinations of a Citizen Botanist is currently showing at Mundaring Arts Centre. It's a great little exhibition of eco-dyed and embroidered textiles, dolls, mixed media and native flora. The picture above shows the botanist in his eco-dyed clothes. The exhibition contains miniature items collected and owned by the botanist arranged in drawers and boxes like a cabinet of curiosities or an attic of long forgotten treasures. One of the nicest things about the exhibition is that the audience are encouraged to interact with the work by moving and turning the models and boxes. It was crowded for the "What on Earth" open day when I visited so the photos are not great. Go and take a look at it in real life if you get a chance.

Let it sit - Gelli® and Pastels

Jane Davenport has just released this new video using the Gelli Arts® gel plate and pastels.

In her video she explains that she lets the paper sit on the plate for 6-10 minutes before lifting off the print. Normally I would lift the paper straight away to avoid it sticking to the plate so I was intrigued by this and decide to test it out. I have been having terrible trouble with getting all of my pastels to life off the plate without leaving half of them behind. Turns out that Jane's advice is great - just let it sit! I also found that rubbing the paper gently rather than hard worked well too.

Here are my prints drawn from magazine and book images using Copic markers and PanPastels.

This one was made using one of Jane's face stencils.

Print Awards

Today I visited Fremantle Arts Centre for the Print Awards exhibition. I wanted to check out the entries in this juried exhibition and see if I might enter in the future and win the $16,000 prize!

I was surprised by what was considered a print in this exhibition. There were the obvious lino cuts, wood cuts, screen prints and lithographs which I clearly recognised as prints. There were also other artworks which I thought were more photographs or paintings. There were quite a few works on fabric and some art books too.

Many of the artists had chosen to work in traditional black and white (including the first prize winner).

 

I enjoyed seeing how the works were mounted directly on the wall with pins and tabs - no frames. It's an interesting exhibition, go take a look if you are in the area.

White Fella Country - Challenge Art Quilt

I've been working on this small art quilt for the WAQA challenge. This year the challenge was a little different. We were each given a small piece of fabric with an Aboriginal print to incorporate into our quilt. You can see a piece of the challenge fabric in the bottom centre of the photo above.

If indigenous people made artwork showing white fella country what would it look like? Instead of the organic shapes, circles and dots used in traditional Aboriginal artworks to represent the land and waterholes maybe they would use geometric shapes to represent the built environment of European settlement?

In this piece I used fabrics in traditional earth colours found in Aboriginal artworks but used squares and grids to represent the cities and roads introduced by white fellas. The land has been torn and shredded. The emu's nest and kangaroo's hollow ripped apart by the buildings. Layers of the land have been peeled away by mining companies and waterways drained.

To begin this piece I went to my stash and pulled out fabrics with similar colours to the Aboriginal piece; reds, oranges, browns, blacks, greens and blues. I wanted to make a slashed quilt with lots of frayed edges so I included some organzas in with the quilting cottons. I layered up several fabrics in place of batting and then appliqued squares of various sizes onto the top layer. I sewed around all the squares before slashing the larger ones to expose the layers beneath. A run through the washing machine helped them fray more. I added a little hand stitching to keep them open. The edges are slashed and frayed too.

You'll be able to see this piece on display at QuiltWest next year.

Experiments With Gelli® and PanPastels

I've been experimenting with using PanPastels combined with Gelli® mono-printing. The PanPastels come in a huge range of rich colours including metallics. The pastels are highly pigmented, nothing wishy-washy here! You can apply them with sponges and soft foam brushes.

I'll be doing a video tutorial showing how to use these products over on the Gelli Arts® Blog in December. Meanwhile enjoy these practise examples.