Currently working on a series of prints for a book. Here is one of them – a magpie which I first quickly sketched in charcoal
Then I draw a simpler shape of the magpie to mask out the paint from the gelli, ready for me to draw in the detail as shown above.
Thought I’d share with you the finished print going off to raise funds for the charity Air Ambulance.
The Vincent motorbike lino cut has been placed over a gelliplate which includes an array of leaves and I’ve added a wash of coffee for the road and a bit of gold to bring out the logo.
This lino cut was made to raise funds for Air Ambulance. There is a large group of bikers who meet once a month and it’s their final meet of the season tomorrow. One of my limited edition prints from the lino will be sold off for the charity. Last time I auctioned one of my dot drawings of a motorcycle and it was bought by a motorcycle store.
Once the sketched outline was drawn onto the lino, I chose one of the smallest cutting tools and used this until the design was how I wanted it, then I removed some of the excess lino around the bike using a larger cutter.
After using a plain black block printing ink, I played around with different backgrounds, including leaves from the garden onto the gelliplate.
While out and about in Shropshire, I came across a shop selling plaster goodies which had been set and pulled from a number of moulds. Unfortunately one broke on the journey home – a kingfisher, which my daughter was going to paint.
My OH repaired the broken plaster bird, so hoping my daughter will still paint it later.
The rose survived and I wondered how it would work on the gelliplate.
I mixed using the plaster rose with leather scraps from a shoe and leaves from my garden. Pleased with the results 🙂
My son’s now settling in at uni. While he gets used to the new area, meets new people and feels the buzz and thrill of his course, I decided to create a little moving in card for him based on a family joke about cutlery (including the renaming of the hard drive in his computer, the documents folders and some other files to cutlery, washing machine and spoons!).
I hope he likes these enough to pin them to his notice board 🙂
This is one of the prints. I’ll share pictures of the others when he receives them, so he gets a surprise!
Ok, when I learned all about the printing trade in my early teens, a gelliplate didn’t exist. We used glass panes, perspex, polystyrene, wood and metal, foam and cardboard plus the traditional carved up potato! So, I’m delighted to share this experience with you of my first ever gelliprint portrait 🙂
I prepared the gelliplate with a brayer and watercolours. Can anyone guess what object I used to provide a textured feature of the face?
Another bit of creativity today was making up a flat-pack paper storage unit for my print studio. The room isn’t large enough for a plan chest, but I do need somewhere to store my prints and paper or card flat. This was perfect
The Elevator Press 