Continuing to develop my Below The Line theme, I’ve been making more prints with my Gelli plate this week. I used acid-free tissue paper and home-made paste paints. There’s a number of recipes for this kind of paint on the Internet, just Google paste paint or paste paper. I stole my recipe from fellow artist and WordPress blogateer 4Rooms and the Moon.
And adulterated it of course to suit my own needs. I made the paste from cornstarch and added dry pigments (Sennelier). The tissue paper was fragile but I dried each sheet between each layer of printing with a craft heat gun and the starch paint has stiffened and strengthened the sheets. The surfaces buckled with the heat, creating crater-like textured surfaces. The sheets are fragile to look at and very light, but much stronger in reality. They have the quality of communion or rice wafers. Yes, I couldn’t resist tasting one of them! Low in calories they may be but they won’t end up as sandwich bread should I fail to get any artworks out of them!
You will notice that the first image here has holes. It’s to do with DNA. These pattern of holes loosely follow the series of chromosomes that make up the human karyotope. I think the set I copied from was male! I burnt the holes into the paper using an incense stick.
I’m going to continue to experiment with paste paint. I’ll try different papers and ways of making marks. This is a great way of quickly creating an abundance when one’s well of images is running low. And it’s green art: eco-friendly and largely non-toxic (but I don’t recommend eating the papers)!
And no, I’m not trying to find a way of creating a human by chemical means. Just art! I’m happy to leave the Frankenstein stuff to the scientists.
Besides, I couldn’t afford to feed another human, whether chemically or biologically derived.
Ann
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They look like dreamy and exotic landscape pictures of newly discovered planets.
Make sure NASA doesn’t get too excited about them.
Wow! Imaginative. I think NASA’s busy watching today’s approaching asteroid. I hope they got the maths right! Your comment is interesting though as I’m exploring the microcosmic world at present which is mirrored in the macrocosmic. If that doesn’t sound too pretentious!