Layered Monoprinting Video

One of my art teacher friends has Friday Fun Days where the students take a break from their regular projects and do something extra fun (Check out her Facebook page "Mrs.Strnad's Art Classsssssss"). Last fall she asked me and some other teachers if we would create a short video with a project to show her students so we would serve as virtual visiting artists. I knew I wanted to do something with monoprinting since they have a class set of Gelli plates and I finally got around to it today before making valentines with my 5 year old. I demonstrated the same technique I've shown to students from grade school to high school!

So, without further adieu, here is my goofy little mono printing demo. I hope it's helpful to someone!

Positive and Negative Leaf Prints

I've purchased enough gelli plates now that I can take them to school and 4 students can print at a time. In October, I had a gelli printing station. Each 2nd and 3rd grade student had a chance. I demonstrated a few techniques and then let student choose and combine how they saw fit. The most popular choice was using the positive and negative space of leaves with first generation and ghost prints.

 I had many texture combs, stamps and found objects available for students to use to create their first print. The students came around the printing table, asked me to squirt the color of acrylic paint they wanted to use, rolled it with a brayer, and pulled the print. They also printed the ghost of the texture/pattern.

The students who wanted to play with the positive and negative space then chose a second paint color, rolled it out, arranged a leaf or several vein side down, and chose one of their printed papers to print on AGAIN. Next, they removed the leaf and printed the ghost. The paper with the leaf ON the plate will have the negative space in the shape of a leaf, which acted as a mask. The ghost will have the positive space showing the texture of the veins. Gelli plates show a lot of detail and texture so this pretty much always turns out cool. Different print combinations- first/first, ghost/ghost, first/ghost, ghost/first yield different results. The students enjoyed exploring and playing with the possibilities.

You can see the lesson plan on the smARTteacher.

 Some students tried different ideas- layering textures or images drawn with cotton swabs.

You can make a homemade gelatin plate for printing, but I've never tried it. I've heard good things about it but buying some plates with Blick gift coupons was a quicker choice for me! I now have gelatin plates in 8x10, 6x6, 5x7, 3x5, and the 8 inch circle. I haven't even had time to try out the circle plate yet, but I'm looking forward to it!

Kindergarten Gelli Printed Hearts

I pretty much always do a quick heart lesson with Kindergarten in February as the students spend a lot of time learning about heart health in PE and doing Jump Rope for Heart. I recently purchased some 6x6 inch Gelli plates and decided to give them a try. The first class cut out symmetrical hearts and used them as a mask to make a negative space heart in their print and after that the students drew with cotton swabs. 

The students got to take the printed heart with them at the end of class and the actual print stayed at school. The tempera paint dries super fast on these prints. If you have acrylic paint, even cheap craft paint, it rolls on to the plate more evenly.

Gelli plates have been gaining popularity over the last few years. I always thought they looked cool but couldn't find room in my budget to order a class set. I've won a couple challenges on the smARTteacher which come with $100 gift certificates to Dick Blick. Score! I decided to purchase 4 6x6 inch Gelli plates with my most recent winnings that I can share between my two schools. Here's how we used them:

I called the whole class around one table and gave a demonstration of "inking" the plate by rolling tempera paint with a brayer, using texture combs to remove a bit of paint (subtractive method), putting my paper heart in the middle, then placing a square of construction paper over the top, rubbing, and removing the paper to reveal the print. I grabbed purple, pink, and red tempera and had a stack of warm and cool colored construction paper cut to the same size as the plate, 6x6. I didn't want to mess with trying to "register" bigger paper so a bleed print worked well. We talked briefly about the effect warm colored paint would have on warm and cool colored paper so the students could choose what they wanted to try. After the students wrote their names on their papers and cut out the hearts, they came to my table 3 at a time to try the monoprinting center. (Forgive me if it should be monotype instead of monoprint. I can never remember the difference!) The students who were waiting or already finished either worked on a project from the previous class or used modeling clay or blocks. They are very used to using centers in this way so it was just fine. Cutting the hearts, however, was tricky as I expected. It was such a rush to finish that in following classes, we skipped the heart mask and instead used cotton swabs to draw designs on the plate.

When we didn't have to mess with cutting hearts, we had time to make ghost prints. Ghost prints are so fun, and I sometimes prefer them to the first generation print. Basically after the students pulled the first print, they used a second piece of paper (this time just 6x6 inch white drawing paper) to pull a print with whatever paint was left on the plate. Sometimes the ghost print doesn't have enough paint to really show up, but you can usually see most of the design. Ghost prints can be fun to work back into with other media. 

Ghost print on the left, first edition print on the right. The Gelli plate is at the top. I don't like to clean the plate until they get really dirty because I like the surprise effect of a bit of leftover color.

  A lot of the fun of printing with a Gelli plate is layering and seeing how the plates pick up textures. I let some 3rd graders give it a try, and another batch will have a chance in coming weeks until they've all had a turn.

I also enjoy using my gelli plates at home. I have a 6x6 and an 8x10. I'd also really like to get a circle plate. If you are interested in learning more about printing with Gelli plates, I can try to answer your questions and/or you can follow Gelli Arts on Pinterest or other social media for ideas and tutorials. 

I purchased my Gelli plates from Dick Blick because I had gift certificates but they are also available on Amazon. They're a bit of an investment but can be used countless times!