Gel Printing - Dark & Bright & Halo Techniques

Hello Friends,

I have a new gel printing technique to share today as well as a second version of it with and additional step added. I call it Dark & Bright technique..and the alternate is the Halo version. These are processes in gel printing that I sort of accidentally created...but they are very popular prints and people keep asking me 'how did you make that?". So here is the step out and video of the process.

Dark & Bright Technique

Step 1 - Apply a layer of dark paint to your gel plate.

Step 2 - Lay a stencil over the paint. A stencil with a lot of open spaces is best.

Step 3 - Use a piece of paper to remove as much paint as you can through the stencil. I like deli paper for this step as it is slightly translucent and also thin so I can push it into the holes of the stencil.

Step 4 - Leaving the stencil in place on the plate, use a smaller brayer to apply 3-4 bright colors over the stencil. I like to use my 6 X 6 gel plate as a palette when I do this step. It also makes great grungey clean up prints.

Step 5 - Remove the stencil and make sure that the paint on the plate is fairly dry. If it is wet and gloppy the next step will fail.

Step 6 - Apply a THIN layer of neutral colored paint over the dried paint on the plate. If you apply too heavy of a layer it will not adhere and pull the paint off. You should be able to see the pattern through the layer of paint.

Step 7 - Burnish the paper well with your hands or a brayer and then pull the print slowly. The plate should be clean when you have pulled it up..all the layers coming off onto the paper.

Tah dah! :) Dark & Bright

For the Halo version of the technique...between step 3 & step 4... apply a complete layer of paint over the stencil. On this one I used copper metallic paint. Then remove the paint like you did with the dark paint onto the deli paper. Don't press as hard or try to remove as much paint. Then carry on with the rest of the steps.

Each shape has a copper halo around it which is why I named this version..Halo :)

So here is the link to the video that has lots more samples of the technique as well as live action and talking in case you did not understand everything :)

Thanks for reading my blog everyone and if you do the technique and post photos on social media ..use the hashtag #darknbrightShelC. That way I can see and like all your prints! That would be awesome!!!!

<3 Shel