Printing 101

I have been taking part in the Printing online workshop with Traci Bautista at Strathmore Online Workshops.    Traci has a very loose, modern, colorful style, but her methods could be applied to many types of mark-making and printing on paper or fabric.  Most of my prints have been on Strathmore Printmaking Paper, 300 Series.

Traci takes us through the process of making masks, stencils, and using both positive and negative images.

The first one shows a background printed with needlepoint grid, a mask and stencil I cut and used to print.  The dark blue is a watercolor paint diluted with water and sprayed through the stencil.

You can see the same leafy stencils used in a different color palette.  The square shapes are from my 6" x 6" Gelli Plate.  The black flowers are from a hot glue flower that I made and used as both a stencil and a stamp.

Traci is all about not wasting the paint left on the printing plates, stamps, or brushes, so you need to have journals and lots of papers ready to print the extra paint.  Here are pages in my Mixed Media journal absorbing some of the extra paint.  I used white ink around the darkest leafy shapes.

Here are two shapes I cut to use as stencils/stamps.

And here are some of the prints made from them.

The first one has a background with lots of marks, stamps, and doodles in oil pastel and acrylic paint. Then I printed the dark flowers with the Gelli Plate.  Looks a little like Matisse to me!

This one is mostly "ghost prints" from using the extra paint on the gelli plate and hot glue stamp.

Here is another with the background from Week 1, added doodle, and the black gelli plate print of the fern.

 The next two are just on computer printing paper, again extra paint absorbers.

 Here is one that is sort of a hot mess of doodles, paint, and prints.  Might make a good background!

For a very different look, I changed to a warmer palette and made some interesting bright prints.  The plaids are from notching the edge of a credit card and scraping it through the paint on the Gelli plate. The big black areas did not work out, so will be covered with something else.

 It is very messy and time-consuming to go through this layering process, but you can produce some very unique papers.  Of course, you can print fabric the same way.  I would probably use fabric paint and/or mix a textile medium into the acrylic paint if I wanted to sew through it.

Have fun!