Gelli plate plus: online class by Carla Sonheim

Now I'm taking a mini online class by Carla Sonheim called Gelli Plate Plus. I've used a gelatin plate once before and posted about it here. That time I made my own plate out of unflavored Knox gelatin. Subsequent to that I started using a sheet of glass to do printmaking-like things. I wouldn't quite say 'printmaking'... Here are some of my exploits in printmaking: where I played around with leaves; printing with ink and stencils; and monoprinting with cut paper.

I did buy a gelli plate (a small one, about 6"x6") after my adventures with making my own gelatin plate, but I hadn't ever gotten around to using it. So I pulled it out and followed the instructions/ideas in Carla's class video. I decided to use the idea of my sombrero man from last week's class, and traced around him and cut him out to use as a guide for painting under the gelli plate. I used a bright orange C.P. Cadmium Orange Golden Open Acrylics paint, which is the orange in the left side of the plate in the picture below (so on the right side of the pull at the top of this post) - I absolutely ADORE this orange- it's fabulous and exactly the orange I've been looking for all my life! Seriously, though, I really have been looking for a brilliant vibrant orange. So I'm REALLY EXCITED about this one.

Then I painted onto the plate and pulled off a print. I made 5 prints total after adding subsequent layers of paint to the plate. My favorite is the first one (top left). But they all look so colorful especially when placed together like this:

I used an acrylic medium slow-drying blender to increase the amount of time to work with the paints, since the only 'open' paint I have is that new orange acquisition I raved about earlier.

Here are some 30-second sketches I made the other day. I want to work on faces. I sketched the face shape then decided this guy looked like he should be a chef so I added the jacket and hat (and mustache):

And this one is a doctor, which of course is obvious by the stethoscope around his neck:

Happy Art-making!

Edit 2/26 - here are two prints I made tonight for Exercise 2 in Carla's class, using a three-color transparent layer technique. After I scanned these, I used the eraser in Gimp to clean up a bit in between some of the marks where I didn't wipe down the plate completely... so consider this traditional printmaking plus digital editing- ha!