As always time flies fast at the beginning of the year. The one second we were waiting for the winter to end. The next second we are faced with the end of spring. I had a lot to do with doing important things and with distracting thing. So here I am with the results of an important thing, a finished class on Gelli Plate printing. After my first steps on printing I ordered a Gelli Plate and decided to introduce myself to monoprinting with the self-study class “Gelli Plate Printmaking” with Carla Sonheim.

What I found in the morning of the last day after 10 days of study on my table….

At the end of the day i’ve got 2 series of 3 and 3 single prints ready.

It was a challenge in more than one way:

• I had to move through the unknown and the possibilities of failure.
• I had – as a rule of mine – to finish the class with some finished art pieces. That was the biggest part because I tend to follow distractions and end up lost very often.
• I had to deal with colors I don’t like much. This part of the challenge was not intended but showed up during the printing and learning process.

I followed the process and some rules that Carla is showing in her class like “always mixing two colors” and I choose one color palette for the complete bunch of prints. Well in the first try I’ve printed 8 sheets as suggested, and another 8 in the second try with slightly adjusted colors, and then I was sticking to them with the goal of finishing all 16 prints. (BTW: you find the pictures numbered… if you wonder.)

It was a very intense work with lots of struggle and lots of studying and repeating stuff from art school about color theory and about composition. In addition I have some process pics here for each piece.

These are the results I’m proud of:

It happens that some print had fallen into place and built a mini series. This is No. 1 series “fairy land” because it reminds me of illustrations for a story book. Process pics are here.

At some point I couldn’t resist to manipulate the piece beyond printing. On this one I cut the top and glued it across the big blue bubble that bugged me so much. Process pics are here.

//No.5// finishing touch through cropping and collaging

I had one single piece that was sitting in the right place from the very beginning. As often as I visited the questionnaire that Carla suggested to proof if a piece is finished or not I couldn’t find anything wrong about it. I wonder. But I did not know anything to do to improve it. So I leave it. And love it.

The questionnaire goes like this and makes me feel safe and comfortable: “Does the piece have contrasting value. If not, does it ‘work’ anyway. Are the colors balanced. If not, does it work anyway. Does the piece as contrasting textures. If not, does it work anyway.” And so on. You get the point… I like this piece as it is.

//No7// first and finished layer

Another tipple of prints turned out to become a series. Weird but they belong to each other in some kind. Process pics are here.

The – for now – last piece I had to transform at the very end through cutting in pieces and re-collaging them. I’d loved to have it go over the border. Process pics are here.

//no.8// finishing touches

So. That was fun. And definitely worth to repeat. Stay tuned, my friends.