Exploring Unconventional Gelli Printing Techniques for Crafting Atmospheric Backgrounds

1. Introduction: Welcome to the studio. It's froyle here. I'm so glad you've joined me. I've been painting and exhibiting for 30 years. And what I'm most passionate about is giving you and experience of creating an unleashing your creativity. I've been running, developing creativity workshops in-person and online for many, many years. And what I have found is everybody is creative and with a few simple Techniques, little bit of encouragement, some coaching. You can create anything. You can produce absolutely beautiful artworks, even if it's your very first time, even if you're a brand new beginner or Virgin artist, you can create beautiful paintings. Creating Art can be a life-changing experience as you connect with your own creativity and unleash your creative expression. There's just something so validating about creating something from the core of who you are is a person and saying that materialize on the paper in front of you. In this Art class, we're going on a creative journey using unconventional techniques on the jelly play to create beautiful atmospheric backgrounds and spectacular mono prints. I'm so excited about it because it's going to be so experimental, it's going to be so PFK-1 and your creativity is going to Seoul with the courage and excitement of creating these beautiful prints. Now, jelly printing is a really easy application and it's a whole lot of PFK-1. It creates a lot of mono prints at one time. And you're going to be so amazed at how unique, special your prints are going to be. I'll be right there with you, run alongside you as we experiment using acrylic paints, alcohol inks, spray inks, and a combination of all of these mediums that don't usually go together. It could be a little messy, but it will be a whole lot of fonts as you gain courage to stretch your artistic expression and experiment with unusual combinations of mediums. You'll learn how to create prints using Multiple Layers, adding texture with different inks and how to enhance your app with Stamps and Stencils. I'll also be teaching you how to add laser copy to your gel prints to create unique and stunning works a lot. You can immediately use the skills to create beautiful and unique Abstract artworks. And by the end of the class, you will have quite a few prints ready to use for collage to put into other projects. Or you may even have some ready and finished to frame. You'd be amazed at how beautiful your prints are going to be. This class is suitable for students of all skill levels. Anyone wanting to explore the fabulous jelly Printing Techniques, It's perfect for beginners because I will lead you step-by-step through each technique, creating each layer. And we're going to be learning together as we experiment with these different mediums on the gel plate. These techniques are simple while producing effective creative expression. And there's so much more opportunity for developing these techniques in your own artistic style. This could be a launch plate for you to open up a whole new door of creative opportunities. I'm really excited to work with you on these projects I let together and materials and let's make Art 2. Getting Started: I'm so glad you're here and I'm so excited for this class. It's going to be very experimental. You and I are going on an adventure. We're going to be using acrylic paint, some alcohol inks, some isopropyl alcohol to create an impact with the acrylic paint. We might even use some acrylic inks as well. We're going to be creating atmospheric backgrounds, beautiful papers that we can use in our collage or mixed media projects. And I know it's going to be a lot of PFK-1 will be taking this adventure together as I'm creating on my jaw plate. I'm going to be trying different ideas for you to try. Some of them might Works, Hello, might not, but we have to be creative, adventurous and see what we can find. I know it's going to be a lot of fan and I know we're going to create some beautiful prints. So let's start with the basics. What aren't materials do you need? Well, first of all, you need a gel plate. So here's my by a joke like it's a new job plate isn't a beautiful, It's so nice and clean. Now, just know if you're using alcohol inks on your gelli plate, it will stain and it will leave marks. My beautiful gel Plate might not look so plain by the end of the day, but I'm okay with that. Right. So I have a brayer I roll-off sheet. I'm also a brush. We're going to be brushing a lot of the paint on today. We need a selection of acrylic paints. I've got some beautiful warm tones and some fabulous metallic paints. I'm also going to throw in a little bit of blue gray, but I will give you a full list of the Art Supply's. It'll be in the notes section of the class. So make sure you have a look at that. Also, I'll put some Amazon links onto the page in case you want to find exactly where I get my products from. Sometimes it just helps to click on a button. I also have some white, titanium white, some iridescent white, and some an bleached titanium. So I'm going to start with these colors. But as I said, this is quite experimental and it could change as we go along. But a full list will be in your notes if you want to see exactly the materials that I'm using now onto the paper. If I have some Japanese rice paper, which is this particular brand, I have some wet strength tissue, which is just a lot stronger than the regular tissue, are really love using this product. I also have some watercolor paper. This one is fairly cost efficient. I got it from stationary supply shop. That's the brand. Vague. What I like about this particular watercolor paper is incredible texture. You can see how it's got that texture map to the paper. I love it. It's really affordable. I'm surprised it's actually so good for being so affordable. It's only 190 GSM, So it's not superdense. But I really like it for this kind of gelli printing where we're taking background prints, a mark-making, and exploring. Because you want to use paper that you're not so precious about, otherwise you won't allow yourself to experiment. I also have some of this watercolor paper. It's a lot stronger. It's a 300 gram. So it's just a lot thicker. It's not as texture, but it is quite rough. I do like the textured papers because they capture all of the paint and I think I just liked tactile. But if you don't like these particular papers, you don't have to use them. It guy. You can just do you if you want to use smooth paper or thinner paper or different types of paper, have a little experiment and try different options. That's the only way you're going to grow as an artist is if you actually try things, maybe mess it up, maybe get it wrong, and try something else. Mileage under the brush baby. That's how we get better as artists. So let's get to splashing some pipe around, right? So I'm going to start with some unlatched titanium and what I'm going to do is brush it onto the plate. And I'm going to put two colors. What kind of gone up create almost landscape he feels with our beautiful composition. So I'll just put the paint on the plight like that. Easy peasy. Then I'm going to put some bronze at the bottom of the plank. Oh man, it feels so smooth. And so now Right? So then what I want to do is to create that fabulous texture. We're going to be using the isopropyl alcohol. Now, I get this from the pharmacy or the chemist, but it says for cleaning and sterilizing electronic items, grooming tools, earrings, and newly PSD is basically it's just a really high concentrated alcohol. So I'm just going to put my finger over the bottle like that and put some of the alcohol on the plight. Now one it's going to do is create a fabulous kind of watery pattern. But because it's the Alcohol and it's not actual water, then it'll dry a lot quicker than if you're spraying water all over your plate. So this is why you've got to have quite thick paper because it's going to absorb all of that paint and fluid up. You're also going to probably want a pretty good drawing space because we're going to be making all her prints. Now, look at that. Isn't that just FUN? That's just beautiful, the texture it's making. We're also going to put other layers on top of your prints. So make sure you put it down somewhere so it can dry it and we can add more layers to it, right? So what I like to do is leave all that on the plate and then add more to it. So this time I'm going to add some gold in the metallic alcohol inks. Oops, I just splashed in the bitmap and I'm also gonna give it a spray. This has got the alcohol in it as well. And then we'll get things moving around a bit more. And let's see how that prints. It really is a matter of taking prints, trying things out, and then moving on with another idea. And you don't really get your flow until you actually start printing. Then you find your rhythm and you work out what's going to work best. I like that, say I like it with a lot less paint because it's got more movement to it. See how good it looks on the textured watercolor. Yeah, I'm briefly like that. Okay. So this time we're going to add a little bit of the iridescent white. I'm not going to worry too much about what's on the plate. I'm just going to keep mixing it because all of these tones are really gonna work well together. Let's get that on there. Let's throw a bit more of the alcohol on there. Let's swish it around so we get more texture happening. I might even throw some more of the Alcohol Ink on the plight as well. Now I've got two brushes going on about some more of that, which God give it a little spray to move some things around. Now, the more you building up on your client the video prints are going to be. So don't stress out if your first prints aren't looking at, right, but going to add other layers to them. Also, the more prints you take, the more paint build-up you've gone on your plate and it's just going to look a lot better. Stick with me. Stick with Medicaid is gonna be great. Alright, let's have a look at that. Say now look how FUN that is. That just looks absolutely fabulous with us. Wispy textures and it's beautiful colors. Yeah. It really doesn't need to match to it because there's already quite an amount on the plaque. This one's a little bit of metallic copper. Notice how I'm using similar color tones because I find that it just works better. This time I'm putting it on the thicker watercolor paper to see how good that looks. I do like being able to absorb all of these fabulous colors and textures. Look at that, that is just beautiful. I'm loving that print. I want a man. If we added some spray dies, inks, which are water-based ops, what do they sell? And then come and say, Great onto our mix. That would already got this. See the texture. It's creative because it's reacting against the alcohol on the plane. So let's add some of the beautiful spray inks. I've got the eyes inks, dye spray is the water-based said they're reacting to the beautiful alcohol that's on that up. Just spread it over the top. This time I'm going to pull it on some of the Japanese rice paper and see how well that absorbed on the beautiful color. Hi, Yes, Look at that. It creates more of a mottled pattern and I'm really enjoying that cow, a combination. One thinking, what about if we turn the jelly play around the other way? So it has more of a landscape emphasis. Then with these beautiful earthy tones, it really would look like I beautiful dreamy landscape. I'm telling you. Then we could put perhaps and image Transfer over the top. That had looked really cool. So let's do that. Now. If you notice, I still have the same plate. I haven't wiped it. I haven't cleaned it, and I'm just going to add similar colors to it. I really liked the prettiness of the iridescent white. That looks really nice. Let's add some of the glitch. Titanium will give that a little move around on the plight was spray some of the beautiful eyes inks on it and perhaps some of the Alcohol and let's see how that prints. Now, all of the pipe that was already there is still there and it will come off as you continue to pull prints. That's what I love about gelli printing. It's just so easy to keep creating. That could be why we end up with so many prints. A bit of an end, this copper bat, I should be able to squeeze a little bit out. Oh yeah, look at that metallic shine, love it. And perhaps some of the eyes inks. I know we're getting really carried away now with all our mixture. Let's perhaps put this on quite a thick piece of paper because yes, I do have a lot of paint on this plate. There we go. Look at all that paint. Yes. I know it's a bit of a lot of high. No, I didn't get carried away with this one. So we'll just keep pulling prints. Definitely looking quite landscape you don't, you think about we use a piece of our wet strength tissue. Look how beautiful that looks. You can also of course, add a little dash of the spray inks when it comes off the plate, just to add a little shimmer or to deepen some of the times. Oh, man, that's just 3. Creating Multiple Layers: I'm going to pull this one on the wet strength tissues and see if I can get most of the paint off the plate. Because then I'd like to add perhaps some of these beautiful blue-gray color that'd be really nice. Oh, that's such a nice texture. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to let this dry and then I'm going to pull this off the plate with another color that's going to have such a beautiful texture to it. So I'm using my favorite iridescent bronze Fine, The Golden. And I'm going to see if I can get the rest of that paint out of the gel plight sector. Beautiful color. Well it pulled quite a bit of the fabulous paint out. Have a look at that. That just looks glorious. Look at the fabulous texture on that. It looks like an old weathered wool or texted paint peeling sign of the house from Venice. That's just beautiful, bright. So I'm going to leave that still left on the plight and that'll keep coming off as I keep pulling the prints. Now I've got a couple of my earlier ones that I did. Then I'm mostly dry and I'd like to give them a second layer. Now if I look at this print and I can see where I want to add more color. I want need some up there, some down here. And perhaps I might use some of the iridescent white because it's a very light height and it won't add a whole lot to her about it. We'll create some texture and I might even pull up some of that underneath paint there that'd be good. Bottom here, I think I might add some of that beautiful blue gray that I've got on my table. Just a little. Because I think that beautiful bronze color could work really well with this blue-gray. That's pretty nice. So let's give it a spray of some alcohol. Stays this way is by spray going to be this, give it a spray. And perhaps even a little bit of, let's say, what about some bronze Schumer in the eyes inks because I just liked the way you get that kind of patterning happened with the water-based inks on top. I love it. Look how it separates and beads up like that. It creates a fabulous texture. So I will put this second layer on the print and see how that goes. It never quite knowing what you're going to get until you pull up the pace of byte. But sometimes that's a little scary. But it is the excitement of why we love jelly printing so much. It's so experimental and it's so exciting to see what we can create. Now, I'm loving that I think the textures are just beautiful. I might even add just a little deepening with the coffee in the eyes Ink. And maybe just a little spritz of the goldmine. I do love that. I do love a little bit of blink, but that page is now looking absolutely beautiful, especially for what a glorious atmospheric backgrounds. What about this one? I think it could do well with a little bit of that blue-gray color. Maybe we'll just put it straight down, see what it picks up. You never know sometimes what you might be able to get off the plate. Yeah, that's beautiful. I really liked the way the blue-gray adds to the coppa and the bronze that was already on the plight and added some more of the iridescent white up there. And that looks pretty nice. I've got this capa blast in the isaacs. I wonder what that'll look like. Oh, that's beautiful. That matches that color really nicely. I'm really glad I pulled that out. A little bit of spray. Jazz, beautiful. Say that patch there. What happens if we add alcohol to it now? Yes. Because gotta try these things, throw it on there. It can only not work. What's the worst thing that can happen? It could look terrible. Well, you could always just wipe it off if you don't like it. But I think that's looking pretty nice. So I'm thinking that these two prints could definitely do with a second layer. It's rather hard to stop. A little addictive because you just want to see what the next print is and what the next marks going to be and how the next paint response. I just love it. Sometimes you just have to go over your prints a few times before they turn out exactly how you want. Now that looks absolutely beautiful. I think I've put it on the gel plight like three times now. It wasn't even really dry this time. But I wanted to suck up some of these glorious combination that's now happening on my plate. That's because I've just kept printing and printing and that is just beautiful. I couldn't reproduce that again if I even tried it so unique, It's such a beautiful mono prints. And this one makes me really happy. I'm gonna use this particular straight tissue paste to keep going over the plate and picking up all of that goes prints. Because it just looks amazing the more layers you put on of the beautiful colors, the more Texas you pick up. They create such incredible, beautiful little abstract paintings. Look at that. That is just glorious. What I love about using the spray inks with the alcohol is that kind of incredibly textured, feathered look as it separates there on the plight. I just love it. This is why you need to be using watercolor paper. Soak up all the layers of paint. Just beautiful and so much FUN. So I'm going to let all these prints dry. And then we're going to look at and see if we want to add anything else to them. Maybe some stencils or some stamps or some image transfers. Or let's see what we think about our beautiful Atmospheric Backgrounds. 4. Adding Stamps & Stencils: Of course, I kept printing and Printing. Look how beautiful they turned down. I absolutely loved it. I had so much fan. I was trying different combinations of these colors more or less or each of the colors. And I would just kept experimenting with different options. You don't have to use these colors. You can use any colors. What we're experimenting with is using the acrylic paint and juxtaposing that against the alcohol inks and the alcohol solution with the water-based inks, It's so much FUN. Allow yourself to experiment, make a mess, get a wrong, it really doesn't matter. You can add another layer to your prints, and even that changes them dramatically. The ghost prints look absolutely fabulous, especially when you pull them up with the golden bronze, iridescent Fine. Oh man, it's just magic. The amount of texture and beauty in the prints and then mono prints. You can't repeat them than one-of-a-kind, amazing, incredible handmade papers for you to use in your mixed media projects or your collages or anything really. So let's have a look now, what we can do with these beautiful prints. Have a look at these glorious prints. I just loved them on so happy. Now remember, they will take two or three layers of putting them on that fabulous paint and Alcohol Ink and texture and spray inks to get them looking like this. This definitely had a couple of layers. And this one turned out absolutely beautiful because I kept putting it on the gel plight and just touching it with paint until it built up an amount on the print that I'm really enjoying. I love this mix of colors. Even the ghost prints look absolutely beautiful. Look at the lovely textured math on that, that looks glorious sodas, that one. And landscape design one looks beautiful to that was when I turned the gelli plate around and did it on an landscape format that's looking glorious. Now, what are we going to do with these prints? I mean, you can use them just like this. They're absolutely beautiful by themselves. They're glorious abstract paintings in their own right. I mean, look at this one is just fabulous, but if you want to add some more embellishments to them, you could make some colors. You could add some stamping awesome Stencils onto them and turn them into even more developed artworks. So I might just give you a little example of something that I would do with them. Just to give you some more ideas, we can easily put some stamps onto one of these prints. I've got this beautiful foam stamp tapping into some paint, some of the glorious golden iridescent coppa. And look how beautiful that looks. Just love it. So easy, we can transform this glorious background into a beautiful print that we can then add to our other artwork or collage or anything else. I think I've got a small one as well. These ones are from PMI, the studio. I'll put the website into your notes if you want to find where to get them. Love it. Look at that. I know I'm going crazy now. Somebody stopped me. That is just glorious and so easy. I love easy, I love instant. Look how beautiful that looks. Adding a simple leaf stamp onto the glorious background. Maybe just one more. Okay, One more, one more week go. Here we go. Fabulous. It's the same process. If we want to put a stencil on the page, look at the beautiful combination of colors. This one's had definitely three layers of paint on it. You just keep working on them until you're happy with how it's looking. So putting a stencils over the top, Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. I've got a little bit of brown black paint on this tray stencils, and I'm just dabbing it on. Adding a little bit of shape to enhance out landscapes theme. Tonight. How does that look? Look, how easy that was? It looks fabulous. And I'm loving the way it's got that pop of blue up there, the beautiful earthy tones, little bit of Cloud. All of a sudden, it's the landscape. There are so many possibilities with stencils and stand. It truly is absolutely endless. What you can create with these fabulous backgrounds and a few items, Art Supplies. Now I'm thinking we could just add a little bit of the iridescent bronze Fine to this print to make it not so stiff looking, it's a little stiff on the page. I'm adding a tiny bit on my brush, very stiff brush, dry brush to do a little bit of scumbling on the tree, just touching it a little bit just to break it up so it's not so stiff looking because it just needs a little bit of playing. Now, if you're doing this and you put on too much and you don't like it, you can just wipe it off again. So don't be scared to try just a little bit of scumbling on the tray so it blends more in the background and doesn't stand out and looks clunky. If you're not happy with this section because you print is dry now, it's easy peasy, you can just wipe it off with a damp cloth until you're happy. I just wanted a little bit on there. Not too much just to break it up. So it wasn't so solid in that brown, black color and it just kinda blended a bit more with the background that makes me a lot happier. What do you think? Don't you think that looks better? I think so. And it only took a few seconds to do that. And that's looking much better. What about we add a stencil with some abstract shapes. I'm really liking these crosses. And I'm thinking we put some on with this beautiful champagne gold Stencils, butter. Yes, look at the color. It's beautiful. Now, what I like about Stencils, but it is, it's thick, straight out of the pot. You don't have to mix it with anything for it to get a lot. Fermat, which I often do with my acrylic paint when I want to put a nice big thick stencil on. And you just use it straight like this with a palette knife or easy peasy. Yes, I do like instant, beautiful and thick. It's luxurious. And look at the glorious champagne gold color. That looks absolutely fabulous. I love it, but I am always partial to abstract. Loved the Stencils, butter, and you can get it in a whole heap of colors. It's just so easy to use straight out of the pot and straight onto the beautiful print, looking glorious, love it 5. Image Transfer Magic!: So if we want to get a little more advanced with our techniques, but using our fabulous Backgrounds, we could create an image Transfer. Now the most important part of an image Transfer with the jelly Plate is to make sure you have a good-quality color laser print. I get mine done from an office stationary supply shop, its commercial machine. These particular prints always work for me. If you have a laser printer at home, you might have trouble because it doesn't have enough toner In the buildup of the print because the toner is what resist the paint on the dark sections and makes that stick to the plate, the light areas or the white sections that don't have any toner, just absorb all the paint and they don't stay on the plates. Art creates that dark and light transference of the image. You might need to run your print through your copy or twice. If you have a home laser printer to make your image work, don't try and use inkjet prints. They just don't work on. Your image copy is the most important part of doing it. Image Transfer, making sure you have a good-quality lies and print. The second most important part is the amount of paint that you put on the plane. You don't want to match because it gets absorbed into the paper. But you want enough so that it leaves a print. I know it's a little tricky, but I do have other classes here on Skillshare that go into the image Transfer with a lot more detail. Now, my plate is beating up because I didn't clean it after we did the Alcohol Ink autopsies. So that's another point. After you've put the Alcohol Ink on your plate, you might want to give it a clean wipe it over, and then use some mineral oils or baby oil to make sure that it's not going to dry out. Friday. Let's see how we work with the transfer process. Remember, you need a good quality laser colour print for the transfer process for this particular technique. Today, it's not too bad. That's in the brown, black color. And then I'm going to put it straight onto one of the goes prints because I think that'll look really nice. I liked the kind of sketchy textured paint that's on the paper. Let's see how it works. This particular ghost print is on one of the wet strength tissue prints. So it should pull up that Transfer. You can wait until the image Transfer has dried and then use a Mac medium to pull it up. I'm not good with waiting so high. Like to just put the paper straight on and pull the print while it's still wet. Not too bad. It's come right off Plate, which is really good. And look how beautiful that looks. It looks like a watercolor painting. You can see my little person there. It's a little bubbly and sections because I didn't claim applied, not to worry, not to worry. I liked the texture of it. You can definitely see that it's trees. You might not notice the person as much, but it probably dry a bit darker and look a bit better. I have a role. I'm pretty happy with that. I liked this sketchy background color that's from pulling the ghost print. There's no way I could reproduce this. It's quite a beautiful MammaPrint. Definitely looks like a watercolor. He'd go, That's another technique that you can use these beautiful atmospheric backgrounds for having a go at the image Transfer. Just remember what I said. The most important thing is your color laser printer. Little bit of practice. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it in no time. So let's just try another one on this beautiful ghost print, where this glorious tree image and a little people at the bottom. Now that just turned out beautiful. I'm really happy with how this looks like the little cluster of columns up here. He said, he just doesn't want you gonna get until you try. I liked the way there's the lines across the bottom here and where the people are and then park bench, that turned out really good. It actually turned out better than I was expecting. Because once I was pulling the print, I thought maybe I should've made it landscape, but it actually turned out a lot better portrait. And you can see the people down the bottom really clearly 6. Thank You & Farewell: Thanks for joining me in the odd class. Wasn't it just so much FUN? And how many prints digit creative? Dye? Forget to post a peak in the project section, I'd love to see your favorite prints. I really loved beautiful multilayered background, the abstract prints, but then I also really enjoyed those image transfers. They came up just so beautiful. Have a look at my other Skillshare classes, especially if you want to develop more techniques with the image transfers. I have a few here on Skillshare. There's also some collage making techniques. So have a look at my other classes. I now you're going to enjoy it. If you have any questions or if you're stuck on something or something's not working, right. You can always e-mail me directly, froyle it for a lot.com and I'll try and ends all of your questions. But don't forget, keep creating, have courage, have a lot of fan and don't give up. You can also contact me on Facebook or Instagram, and you can have a look at my beautiful original paintings on my website. If you want to show me more what you'll creating common join my private Facebook group. There's a whole lot of beautiful people in there that just love creating and encouraging each other. I know you'd really enjoy it. The links will be on your notes that's in the class descriptions. I have a look at that and I really hope to see you again in the studio.