Gel Plate Image Transfer with Colored Pencils

This is a post from Belinda Del Pesco’s Art Blog Belinda Del Pesco.

Gel Plate Image Transfer with Colored Pencils

If you make botanical gel prints using leaves and flowers from your yard – you can add a gel plate image transfer on top of the botanical print.

Or, in reverse, make a magazine gel plate image transfer first, and then use a paper mask to preserve your favorite parts, and over-print with botanicals. Picture a pretty girl standing in foliage.

I’m new-ish to gel plate printing, but I really love it. There’s no press required, you can use standard acrylic paint if you don’t have printmaking ink. Also, there’s no laborious rubbing to transfer the image.

Plus, it’s fast!! At the end of a few hours of joyful rolling out color, dropping leafy shapes, and pressing with a flat hand, you could have 30-50 prints. Read on…

Art Experiment Cheerleader

When an art process moves along fast, it’s easy to “get in the zone”. It’s also a quick way to zoom past disappointing prints.

If a gel plate botanical or an image transfer doesn’t work, 1) turn it 90 degrees and print over it, 2) cut it up and collage it, 3) use rubber stamps on it, and then write a letter to someone on the back, 4) shred it and make another one.

Gel plate printing is a perfect intro to printmaking, and each print works up very fast. Especially with botanical prints. The plate itself is made from gelatin, so it’s a rubbery, clear, shiny printmaking surface.

Super Simple Prints

Select some flowers and leaves, roll acrylic paint onto a gel plate (like this one), lay the botanicals on the still-wet pigments, press a sheet of paper against that pigment-plant stack with your hand, and pull your print. Finished.

Now, pull the leaves and flowers up, and you’ll see a mask of their imprint preserved in the wet acrylic pigments. Lay another sheet or paper on the plate and rub and pull that one. Shazam! You made two prints in 1 minute.

Now, make another one. Or, turn your fresh made botanical print 90 degrees and print over it with another color and other plants. And then print another layer on top of that one. (

Explore the resource links I’ve listed below if you’re new to gel plate printmaking.

Gel Plate Print Resources

• One of the best resources for gel plate experiments and transfer images is Mark Yeates’ YouTube channel. Have a look at that over here.

• Several companies make gelatin plates, and one of them – Gelli Arts – has an extensive set of demo videos here.

• If you want to get inspired, visit the instagram account of UK Artist Jennifer Douglas. Just watch this short sample of her botanical

printing technique with small gelli plates here.

• Here is a post with an archive of gel plate ball point drawing transfers, with plenty of links to video tutorials and process images.

• This post features a gelli plate monotype portrait print, done with acrylic paint, in layers, and then transferred to paper after the layers have dried using gel medium. This process was really fun.

Go Forth and Make Something

I hope you’re keeping your hands on art supplies, and creative ideas are flowing this season.

Let us know in the comments what you’re either working on, contemplating as a project, or what you’ve just finished.

Artists have a hard time tooting their own horn, but this can be considered a roll call. Check in. Tell us a little something.

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see you in the next post -

Belinda

P.S. I recently tried these colored pencils by Amazon Basics, and I’m happy to report that they’re inexpensive and wonderful.

Art Quote

When you’re in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you.  Your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics . . . and one by one, if you’re really painting, they walk out. And if you’re really painting, you walk out.

Audrey Flack 1931-2024 Art and Soul; Notes on Creating

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