Creating acrylic paintings from Gelli print backgrounds.

Acrylics over gelli plate print.

 'The evolution tree,' acrylics over gelli print, 12 ins sq. Final.

  'The evolution tree,' acrylics over gelli print, 12 ins sq. Almost finished.

 'The evolution tree,' acrylics over gelli print, 12 ins sq. lights and darks added.

  'The evolution tree,' gelli print base, 12 ins sq. Ink drawing stage.

 'The evolution tree,' gelli print base, 12 ins sq.

The first stage is to make your gelli print base.  I am using up old prints for this. 

I have found that its often best to use lighter coloured prints, as when you layer the acrylics to make the painting, the colours get progressively darker in tone. Also, its easier to see your drawing when you draw on a light toned base.

The second stage is to add your drawing:- either a drawing you made separately can be traced onto the basis, or you can try to 'find' imagery that is already there (hiding) in your base.  Its a good idea to spritz with fixative before attempting to paint. 

The third stage is to add some lights and darks....lights can be white gesso.

The final phase is of course to add paint, bringing your painting to a final stage where you are fairly happy with the result.  

You could call the artwork finished at an earlier or later stage: maybe just the drawing over the gelli print works, or maybe you will have to paint over the base with much paint.  Up to you.

At the moment, my results with the gelli print to acrylic painting tend to be surrealist, or symbolic, in nature.  This is because I look for imaginative imagery in the background for my drawing stage.  You could instead, just trace on a drawing from a more realistic style, such as a portrait.  

At the moment , I am enjoying 'finding' strange creatures in the print as it leads to a kind of story-telling.

On with the experiments!!

Bye for now.