Cath Sheard Art

Tag: Gelli Plate

  • Stronger contrasts

    In my last post I said I’d given away all my gelli prints. During the week I bought some Golden Open acrylics – they’re expensive here in New Zealand but great for gelli printing. I choose a few favourite colours; black, titan buff, red, titan pale green (celadon), dark violet and anthraquinone blue.

    I got out my Elizabeth St Hilaire stencils, plus a few old favs from StencilGirl, and got to work. I wanted some graphic prints, and stronger lines. I made about 50 prints, using a mix of Hahnemuhle Sumi e and Sketch rice paper.

  • Get your gelli on

    I love the Gelli plate as an artist’s tool. Mine are all Gelli Arts brand, but I don’t think there’s a lot of difference between the brands other than the plate sizes. I use the gelli plate to make papers for collage and, when the stars align, I make finished artworks.

    I use Hahnemuhle Sumi e rice paper, Yasutomo rice sketch paper, deli paper, Dina Wakley Media collage paper, tissue and cheap copier paper. I use a brayer, mostly Liquitex or Golden paints, and some of the time I use stencils – I particularly love the Elizabeth St Hilaire collection from Joggles.com

    Recently I gave away my stash of gelli prints to fellow artists in a wonderful FB group run by talented New Zealand artist Froyle Davies. Why? It’s fun to send envelopes off to other artists, and it’s good to refresh your collage materials sometimes.

    Yesterday I grabbed a gelli plate, paints and stencils and got to work – 110 gelli prints later I have a new pile of prints with a different feel – I’m excited to start using them.

  • #cjs20 day 7

    Today’s artist for #cjs20 is Birgit Koopsen, whose wonderfully colourful gelli art tutorials I follow on YouTube. This project really appealed to me because I’m a gelli plate fan, so always looking for new ways to use my tools, and it didn’t disappoint. I’ll be using the process again and experimenting with the possibilities.

    day 7 Birgit K

  • Repurposing supplies

    I love scrapbooking. It might not be ‘trendy’ anymore, but I enjoy recording our lives, documenting what I know of old photos, and generally playing with paper, scissors & glue. I was a tutor for a national scrapbooking company so had access to all the newest supplies; one of my favourites was Basic Grey

    I was tidying up some supplies today and found my stash of old letters. Some of the self-adhesive ones aren’t any more. and I had quite a lot of Basic Grey heavy paper letters left. All the useful letters like a, e & s are long gone, and I’m left with a pile of g, x and q! 

    I was going to throw them out but suddenly realised I could repurpose them. Out with my 16×20 Gelli plate and some Gold Open acrylics. I put down one colour, then used the letters as masks and pulled a print – the yellow one shows what this looks like. I removed the letters, put down a fresh colour, more letters and overprinted; I did three layers on each.

    The page that looks a bit like old leather is where I pulled the leftover paint off the plate each time. I’m not sure what I will do with these yet, but like the look, and have tucked the paint covered letters away to use another day. 

  • Art classes in Greymouth went well

    I taught an art journal class on Thursday night and a gelli print class on Saturday in Greymouth, through Left Bank Art Gallery. The classes were held at CoRe, a fantastic community facility run by Cassandra Struve, one of those people who has so much passion for community development and can see the possibilities then act on them.

    Some of the people who attended didn’t want to be photographed, which is fine, so these photos are entirely representative. People seemed to get a lot out of it and enjoy the processes. I had brunch with Penny Kirk yesterday and spotted a women who had attended the gelli class. I said hi and she told me she’s already turning her gelli prints into cards and will be buying her own gelli plate.

    I’m already talking with Cassandra about running more classes in the new year, taking people to the next level with art journals and printing. As I said to Tony this morning, it’s funny that when you travel away you quite often get more support than at home. Perhaps when you’re local people assume you don’t have much to offer, or figure they can catch you any time?

    Here’s a few photos of the classes and what people created. Enjoy!