Gel Plates
Poking around YouTube, I found an artist making cool stuff. And then, because algorithm, I found other artists using the same mediums he was – the gel plate. Most were using the commercially-available gel plates, but I feel like spending the money for something that I might not enjoy using doesn’t math.
But, as is the way of so many commercially-available art supplies, they’re easily made at home, and so I did!
My plate ended up about 8”x9”. For about $15. Versus the $30-50 for the commercial version. And, if mine is messed up or in need of refresh, I can just melt the thing down and start over.
I will probably melt this down after a while and repour anyway – both because the paper I use for experimenting is only 7x9, and so this doesn’t fit quite right; and, because there are bubbles – the bane of a gel-plate pour. But for experimental purposes, this is awesome.
My first image really sucked. Like, pitched it straight into the bin kind of sucked. I was doing a transfer of a photo I’d taken, but I put the paint on way to thick and it just didn’t do what it was supposed to. Still, I could kind of make it out, so I waited til it dried… and added way too much paint to pick up the image. Oof. There’s bad art and then there’s unintelligible blobs.
So, I cleaned it off and started again. This time, I tried using one of the images I block-printed with oil, thinking maybe that would work? It kind of did. I think if I’d used a darker paint instead of the pale iridescent paint I’d used, it might have turned out a little more distinguishable. Again, though, I used too much paint to pick the image up (and maybe the wrong color. You can barely see the words, or the image, and the plate wasn’t particularly clean when I laid down the second image, so while it’s definitely got grungy texture, it’s not so much on the clarity of form.
Incidentally, here’s the image I used, after I transferred it. With the paint, it might actually be improved.
I see so much potential with gel plates, as a background to put other things onto, as a complement to other work, and as a form in and of itself. I’m excited to play more!