Printing with a gel plate is one of those immediate pleasures. I roll out the paint on the surface of the plate. Sometimes I use a soft tip rubber tool to make marks in the paint. Other times I use leaves, forms I have cut from cardboard, or torn paper to make marks in the paint. This process is random, and results vary. They are mostly abstract prints.

I find the best prints happen when multiple layers of paint and marks have built up. There is often a rawness to the print. Not quite grunge, but certainly ‘lived in’ where edges show and nothing is polished.

What To Do with Abstract Gel Prints?

These prints work really well as backgrounds for my digital art. I also sell them at markets and open studio days as collage packs.

I’m not the only one who finds this intriguing. The prints with layers of marks and paint are complex. I don’t think it would be easy to replicate them with paint on canvas. Using Photoshop, I can change the colours to create colorways for fabric prints. This is necessary if I want different colourways for fabric panels. The nature of a gel plate means there is no way I could recreate it, even if I wanted to. I refer to my abstract prints from a gel plate as monoprints.

Here is an example of an abstract print. Alongside it is an image of the gift card I created from it. By adding a camellia flower in the foreground, there is a lot of depth created. I have not changed any of the colours in this design.

I photographed this particular camellia in my mother’s garden. Recently it was her birthday, so I gave it to her, with my message. She looked at it for a while, and asked ‘Is that my camellia?” When I said it was, she could not stop smiling. “I can’t believe a flower from my garden is on a card”. As a proud gardener, it made her day. This design is for sale on my Redbubble shop.

What Does a Gel Plate Look Like?

This is a photograph of my gel plate in the middle of printing leaves in green and purple. The pale stripe on the left is the imprint from a piece of soft bark. The paint left on the surface of the plate, when dry, will transfer to the next print in the foreground. To achieve this, I roll a new layer of paint over the dried purple. Sometimes this is when I pull the next print. Other times I add new marks at this stage. These marks will be in the background.

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