Gelli Printing with Young Friends

Rubbing paint off Gelli Plate onto paper

Anyone who has tried gelli printing with the new gelli plates from Gelli Arts has fallen in love with the technique. The ability (for even those who don't feel very artistic) to make monoprints that are layered and painterly is addicting.

So to spread the love I got together with my good friend's  two creative granddaughters who love art. We laid out the brand new gelli plate, new tubes of colorful paint, new brayers (small rollers for spreading paint) and lots of paper and paper towels on one of their first days off for summer vacation.

It turned out to be a really special day. I felt like I was at summer camp. The girls, ages 7 and 4, took to the painting right away, and then ran away with it. I was so impressed with the color choices they made, having originally thought that they would stick with the pastel paints. I'm not sure why I thought that, but they soon started getting out the neon and the black paints and doing awesome things with them.

What a great way to spend a morning!

Here are some samples of their work:

Making sure the paper is covered with paint from plate underneath

Spreading the paint with a brayer

Pulling a print from the Gelli Plate 

A neon butterfly

A psychedelic print from the Gelli Plate

Creative Spotlight

Creativity Two Ways: Photography vs. Painting 

I took this photo in October in a small town not far from here named Volant. This barn was located at the back of the parking lot where my sisters-in-law and I left our car, choosing to walk around the town on the beautiful fall day.

We took a lot of photos that day, and then my sister-in-law Maggie decided to paint a couple of the scenes.

Therefore, we have this beautiful renditon of the same scene:

This painting has so much more life and color in it than the photograph I took.

Here's another example: 

This is a very nice photo, I think, and it tells the story of fall and plenty. But when Maggie wielded her magic, this is what resulted:

Beautiful, eh?

I love taking pictures and will continue to do so, because it makes me happy. I can't paint as beautifully as this, and maybe you can't either, but creativity is expressed in different ways by different people. If you can't do one thing, you can do another. Everything has its place.

To see more of Maggie's work, visit her blog.