Showing posts with label Small Texture Gel Prints. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Small Texture Gel Prints. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 4, 2025

STITCHED LANDSCAPES

 This technique uses the gel prints that we made in the last class, Small Texture Gel Prints. Tearing the pieces of gel print into small pieces and layering them, you can create wonderful landscape designs that are then further highlighted with the use of hand stitching with metallic threads to hold it all in place. An alternative is to use a sewing machine to stitch the papers down. I have done both in the samples below. These are all created on 200gsm Baohong watercolour paper that has the sky area painted before layering the papers. Such a satisfying technique, and it's a great use of gel prints, but could also be done by using plain and small patterned papers. For the first time, I'm using no quotes or words on these as I want the landscapes to speak for themselves; however, I had to call them something so each has a name as a description.

Red Sky

Moonlit Sea
(Here's a good trick to get that perfect moon on
watercolour. Wrap a 5c piece (approx dime size)
with a tissue and while the sky is still wet, press
the tissue-wrapped coin into the sky.
It will leave the perfect moon shape.)


Barren Hills

Golden Sun

Chocolate Hills
(In the Philippines, there is an area with hills that turn
brown when the green dies off. They
are called Chocolate Hills. This reminded
me of the pictures that I'd seen of them.)

Blue Lake



Tuesday, October 21, 2025

SMALL TEXTURE GEL PRINTS

I wanted to create some gel prints with some texture in the acrylic paint but needed the texture to be small in scale as the gel prints will be used in a future class. Gel prints are always such a great background to use for ATCs and cards and because of the versatility of acrylic paint on the paper, it can handle stamping and embossing, die-cuts and images equally well. This means it is truly a fantastic basic background to build your design onto. I discovered amongst my stash some clear, lightweight plastic texture plates that I had from using with air-dry clay years ago and these work perfectly to add small scale texture to the acrylic paint. These are all a one-pull print so no waiting for paint to dry, so you do need to work quickly to get the pull done before the paint dries on the plate. 


"Length of life"


"Holding grudges"


"Vague"

"Shine"

"Shine" close-up showing the gorgeous
shimmery paint on the bulb.

"Gardener wanted"


"Gardener wanted" close-up.

"Float away"
(I added some white acrylic paint with a
stencil over this background.)