Gelli Prints

Artist Statement;

This is my extended Gelli print. For this project, we started off by putting ink on a gelli print and placing leaves on top until we liked it. Once we had leaves arranged on top, we put a piece of paper on top and rubbed it in to the ink to create the negative space of the leaves. Once that was done, we took the leaves off and put another piece of paper on to create the positive space of the leaves. Lastly, we took one last piece of paper to create a ghost print with the remaining ink.

Once I had created 3 sets of that process, all 6"x6", I looked through my 9 photos and picked one I liked. Once I decided on one with negative space, I began to look at it and started to think about what I wanted to do to extend it. I got an idea of putting a face in just the negative space and I thought it would look cool. I started off by sketching out the face shape that was inside some of the leaves but also somewhat off the edge of the print. Once I had the face shape sketched out, I started to look at and sketch in the eyebrows, then the eyes, the nose, and the mouth. After I had all the details sketched in I began to purify my lines somewhat and add shading. With the negative space where the face was cut off, I decided to fill it in with charcoal to make it look different that the rest of the image.

To create this project, I used ink, leaves, Gelli pads, and brayers to create the prints. Once the prints were created, I used a 2h, 2b and 4b pencil to create and sketch the face, I used a sharpie to draw an outline around the whole image, and I used a charcoal pencil to create the black around the outside of the face.