Apologies to any AC/DC fans for the terrible title! So my last blog post was about the frustrations of learning the technique of gel plate printing and also about how our 'failures' really aren't failures at all. Not in the conventional sense anyway; when it comes to gel printing however, I had been failing to print anything close to an image! In an effort to improve on this situation, I bit the bullet and bought a small (6 x 6") branded gel plate (I had been using a generic un-branded version from an art supply store I found online as it was less expensive than the branded version that everybody else seems to use) and there's a reason it's popular, it's so much better. Less tacky, easier to clean, and the paper pulls off really easily. With my new found success, I've been through just about every scrap of magazine that I currently have and have finally managed to pull some prints that I could call a success. I've added some pictures to this post and they are in order of 'success'; you can clearly see the progressing improvement; I've even started to paint on colour with a brush in places. These are perfect by no means, I still have much to learn about the best types of images to use and my paint distribution needs some finessing, but I'm really happy with how much this has improved and all in a relatively short time.
One of the great things about printmaking is the ability to take lots of prints from one medium or method (lino, wood, silkscreen etc) and you can see my mono printing results in the Products page, but with this type of printmaking, once the image has been placed on the painted gel and removed, it's not re-usable (unless you use a stencil of course). This makes each print a one-off piece and that plus the unpredictability is what attracts me to it, you just don't know what the end result will be. I'm sure with time and practice, I will be able to better predict the eventual result but we are't there just yet. In the meantime, I'm in danger of becoming a magazine hoarder and I'm currently accepting donations to the growing pile!
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