How I started with gelli transfers

I saw this interesting thing one day on the internet. Magazine pages magically printing themselves onto paper, via Gelli plates. Could it really work? I needed to try it out. 

I went to the store to buy a fashion magazine and to the thrift shop to look for cool books. I found a book about old cars with vintage sports cars.

At the studio again I was excited to see if it should work. The blog posts I read said that you just need regular acrylic paint, a Gelli plate, and some paper to print on. Not too complicated. So I got started. And it worked! The fashion magazine made beautiful prints as you see. The book didn’t work as good. I got some shades but no full prints.

I tried out a few different brands of paints, and they didn’t make any difference. I ended up using Liquitex, Schjerning, Winsor & Newton, L&B and Maimeri.

The paper you print of, however, makes a big difference. The glossy magazine pages worked the best. I also tried a magazine with a matt print and that didn’t work out at all. The old book had glossy pages but the print was weak. If you are familiar with the printing process you can probably figure out what works or not.

This technique was so much fun and I can continue work on it for a long time. It’s amazing to see the magazine print come off and over to your paper. The papers you print also turn out great and I ended up saving some for collages.

My best tips as a beginner Gelli transfer printer:

1. Print fashion magazines. They work.

2. Pics with high contrast works best.

3. Don’t put to much paint onto the Gelli plate when printing. Both when lifting the magazine page and when you print your own paper.

4. Make sure you see the magazine print off through the paint on the Gelli plate when you print your paper.

Watch the magic of Gelli transfer printing happen:

Collage portraits experiment

I and Ann-Charlotte got the idea to do a series of arty portraits. And what subjects would be best for that? Ourselves obviously! The brief was kind of simple; use photographs of ourselves, our favorite mixed media techniques, such as collage, and explore and have fun. 

We brainstormed ideas about wanting the portraits to have a handmade feeling, with elements of spring. As a part of this collaboration experiment, we wanted to find a process where we could collaborate by making a layer each and passing the piece back and forth to each other. 

The start of the collage portrait project

To start off the collage portrait project, we went on an inspo hunt and put together a Pinterest board.

To spice up the images a bit we wanted to add pieces of ephemera and graphics. I truly love places like Freepik, it’s a huge resource for image makers.  You can download stuff for free simply by crediting the artist. We used a few elements, and to “make it our own”, and give it that handmade feel, we printed out the elements, colored them in and glued them onto the portraits.

Have you tried an Instagram puzzle?

As a part of this experiment/ challenge/ exercise.. or whatever you want to call it since it was all of that, we also wanted to put the images together as an Instagram puzzle. Oh jeez… now that totally leveled up the hard work to a new dimension. The whole composition needs to look good with a central focal point, rule of thirds, color scheme yada yada.. and each picture needs to be a stand-alone element. Let’s just say my inner critic had a meltdown and I had to surrender. Enough pixel pushing, let’s just publish and get it over and done with.

As mentioned previously, this was part of an experiment with so many layers.

It was our first attempt at collaborating on a distance.

It would be great to see what happened if we could continue working on the pieces once they were enhanced print them out and continue adding real or handmade elements, to make them digital again and continue that until we had the perfect image.

However, I enjoyed this exercise and it gave me an appetite to continue experimenting. How about you, have you done any self-portraits lately?

Love Stina

Credit:

Designed by pikisuperstar / Freepik Designed by rawpixel.com / Freepik