Not long after I took that workshop with Deborah Fell, I heard about an upcoming call for entry for a show that will take place in 2016. I don't want to say too much about this because I'm not sure what the status of this show is at the moment, but between the techniques I was using after the workshop and the call for entry, I was hugely inspired! The "theme" I chose to interpret was my personal vision of Colorado. There was a ton of leftover material from the workshop that I wanted to use, but in the end I had three large pieces in mind and had to make even more materials. A surface design superstorm hit my studio when I got out the Gelli Plate, stencils, stamps, and any other mark making tool I could find. When I thought I had enough collage material I painted some canvas and began collaging. When everything was dry I cut the collaged canvas into 6 inch squares and combined the colors into the background for a quilt. I forgot to take photos of the original canvases but I did take some of the second round. Here are some pictures of the uncut canvases and one of the backgrounds that I assembled.
gelli plate printing
Journal Pages With Printed Paper
"Gelli arts", "Inktense blocks", "art journal", "collage", "mixed-media", "paint"CommentThis journal page began with an ink blot. Okay, that actually traveled over here when I was experimenting on another page. I don't let it bother me. These pages had been gessoed at some earlier time and scribbled into with a stylus. Ignoring the ink blot, I began by making a grid of warm, analogous colors with my Inktense blocks and a water brush. Inktense blocks seem to work better on a gessoed page, but nonetheless, this came out looking horrible. Out came the red paint and glazing medium and I covered both pages. When that was almost dry I spritzed the pages with a little water, let it sit a minute, and then blotted with a paper towel. This is so easy and I just love the effect. Then I cut up one of the papers I had made while playing with my Gelli Arts printing plate and collaged the green elements down. Deli paper works so well for collage! After that I made a stamp using cut up pieces of fun foam that I glued to a stiff cardboard base with gel medium. I used gold acrylic paint with the stamp. I'm not sure this is done, but since I haven't decided what to do next I thought I'd at least post this much as an example of using my printing experiments for collage in my art journal.