I made a new gelatin plate for monoprinting two days ago and printed up some fabrics yesterday. Here is a great link from Linda Germain on how to make a plate.
How to make a gelatin plate Linda has several YouTube videos and tutorials on her website and regularly blogs with tips on how to print. She prints on paper, though.
You can use any kind of paint or ink. I used regular acrylic paints since I had a supply from a painting class and want to use them before they dry out. To get my colors, I mixed ceruleuan blue, ultramarine blue, a little cadmium yellow light, and a lot of titanium white. I added an equal amount of fabric painting medium so that it would play well with fabric (although I don't think that is necessary).
I spread the paint with the brayer onto the gelatin plate and then pressed a toilet paper roll here and there onto the plate to get oval shapes and then laid down a piece of cotton muslin and pressed it down evenly and lifted it up. I sprayed water onto to the plate and used a clean piece of cloth to wipe up the extra paint and got a nice pattern on that cloth, too. I repeated several prints with various patterns for about 10 cloths.
Then, to get gray, I added a little cadmium light to the blue mixture and some more fabric medium and some more white. Here are two of the prints.
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| with stripes |
I'm linking this post to
Off The Wall Friday Be sure to visit to see all the wonderful art quilters and make comments on their posts.
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| with ovals |
After the paint dried, I used Shiva Paintstiks, which are oil paints. I found out that you can use the oil paints on top of acrylics without a problem, but you cannot use acrylics or other water-based paints on top of oils. Anyway, what I did was to put texture plates under the fabrics and then rub the sticks on top to get patterns and layers of patterns. I pressed the oil sticks first onto a plastic plate and mixed the colors with a palette knife to get colors I wanted and loaded stencil brushes with the paint and then rubbed the brushes across the fabric that was on top of the texture plates. (One of the texture plates was actually a brass trivet that I bought at a thrift shop.)
Here are the same two fabrics from above after I was done adding textures. I hope to use these for my next art quilt background.
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| with textures |
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| with textures |
Interesting fabrics you are creating!
ReplyDeleteThanks. The photos don't really capture their full character, though. I'm excited to use them, but they need about a week to fully cure. So to keep occupied, I'm going to work on some upholstery in the meantime. Hopefully, next week, I can post some photos of a background using those fabrics and some of the others.
DeleteOh fun!!! I love Linda Germain's work and she is so generous with information. I've never made my own gelatin plate but one of these days. I keep saying that too. :( But really....one of these days!!!
ReplyDeleteMaking a plate only takes a few minutes. The first time I made one, I thought you had to put it in the fridge to make it harden and as I gingerly walked the full cookie sheet to the fridge, the gelatin flowed over the edges all over the floor. Then I saw that it hardened at room temp. on the floor. What a mess. LOL. So realize that it hardens at room temp and you leave it alone to harden before you store it in the fridge.
DeleteThe only hard part for me is to lock the cats on the patio while I work so I don't get paw prints. Poor kitties with their noses at the windows watching.
I've been playing with gel printing for awhile now. I love what happens with this technique. Soon, I'll be taking a class with Linda and I'm so looking forward to this! I'll be watching to see these pieces in your quilts!
ReplyDeleteThis is something I would like to try. Thanks for the link.
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