Gelli Arts Monoprinting: Making Masks Tutorial
Diana Delaney
Make Your Own Masks And Use Them To Create Unique Monoprints That Honor Your Own Personal Symbolism.
Hello Beautiful Art Blog Visitors!!
Welcome to the virtual home where I channel my wild light. I've been enjoying so many gelli plate monoprinting tutorials I've been finding on pinterest, lately. There are also great videos on youtube that have offered me a ton of inspiration over the years during my gelli arts experimentations and meditations. I wanted to share a little tutorial with images that share the process I've been exploring and enjoying, lately.
This Is What You'll Need For The Process:
A Gelli Arts Printing Plate, or A Home Made Gelatin Plate
Plastic Index Dividers (for cutting mask shapes)
A Pair of Small Sharp Scissors.
Acrylic Paints - Folk Acrylics or Professional, I like a combo
Acrylic Paint Markers - I like Posca
Deli Paper
A Brayer
A Sense of Adventure
Your Favorite Tunes
I've had a great time making my own masks.
One day, I started cutting out shapes from little plastic index separators with tiny fiskers, in a kind of creative stream of conscious cut-outs. And low and behold, a full bowl of Gelli plate masks appeared, right before my eyes, almost like magic.
So Once You have Used Your Sharp Little Scissors To Cut Out All Kinds Of Mask Shapes, You Can Toss Them In a Bowl and Get Your Gelatin Plate of Choice Out for Monoprinting Fun!!! I like to lay my Gelli Plates out on Plexiglass, So I can make prints on them or use them as large stamps. Take a few colors of acrylic paint and dab here and there on your gelli plate.
Then Use a Brayer to Roll the Paint all over Your Gelli Plate. After you roll the brayer, your gelli plate will look something like this (If You Use A Combo Of Blues & Purples):
Now Take A Sheet Of Deli Paper and Press Your Deli Paper Down on The Gelli Plate, If You'd Like to Create A Solid Background Color.
Now, take another color of acrylic paint that is either complimentary, or in contrast to the background you pulled on the deli paper. I'm choosing to use a complimentary color in this example. Roll this color of your choosing onto the gelli plate with your brayer and cover with several of your masks, to create an interesting design.
Now You Can Pull A Print Over Your BackGround. Alternatively, You Can Pull Your Print Onto A Clear Sheet of Deli Paper, If you'd rather have the affect of negative space that can later be filled in with watercolors, doodles, markers, etc. I enjoy experimenting with Gelli Arts Monoprints in all kinds of ways.
Here is a Series that I Created Using This Masking Process, with the intention of creative negative space to later be filled in with watercolors and outlined with posca paint markers. For this series I used the 6x6 square Gelli Plate, and all the other supplies listed above.
