In the background you can see my first prepped canvas. In the foreground, a sketch from a life drawing session that I put on a template that I plan to use as a guide for each piece of art.
Here I have placed a 6x6 inch Gelliarts gel printing plate over the guide image and started putting down some acrylic paint.
Above you can see the painted gel block. It was tough to tell how much coverage I had so...
...I slipped a blank piece of paper between my guide drawing and the gel block. I decided that the coverage was a little wonky in places so I cleaned up a few spots but neglected to take any pictures. Once the gel block painting was where I wanted it, I pressed my canvas board down on the block.
DISASTER! This was the first time I had used the Gelliarts gel block and my first pull was terrible. The paint was too dry and the canvas didn't create a stronger bond to the paint than the gel block so most of the paint did not come off. Fortunately my template under the block had an 8 x 10 inch registration box around it so I could easily align the canvas panel for more impressions. Instead of painting the entire image, I began quickly painting in a section here and there and quickly re-pressing the panel to it. In the end, it took about six pressings, including the failed first to get the image to a point I was happy with it.
Here is the end result. Not bad for trial and error. I'll try a few more with the Gelliarts block and see how it goes. I need to use brighter, richer colors for my under tones as this is coming off a little flat. Hopefully I can figure out a way to get this technique working a little better, otherwise I may be back to making my own gel plate with Knox gelatin - which I know works well with canvas panels.
Tomorrow I will finish another painting. And it will be an improvement over this one.
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