Making Paper

Making Paper Extra
No, I don’t actually make the paper. I make the paper more interesting. I use a gel printing plate to layer color and pattern onto a plain piece of paper, creating a singular print. Stencils and stamps are the design tools, and liquid acrylic paint is the color source. Here’s a brief simplified pictorial of the process:

The Tools
For pattern-making, I collect and make stencils and stamps, as well as cut my own masking shapes from Tyvec and sheets of acetate. An ink brayer is used to roll on  liquid acrylics from Golden Paints - so rich in vibrant pigment! And the star of the show, the gel plate, is just like it sounds - gelatinous. Unlike the original versions made from bovine bone-marrow gelatin, modern gel plates are made of a latex-free mineral oil polymer. (I’m so relieved cows are no longer involved.)

The Base Layer
Sometimes I start with a “pull” of a solid light color.  The paint is rolled on to the gel plate and a piece of rice paper is pressed evenly over it, then peeled off, bringing the color with it. Almost any type of paper works, but rice paper tends to be the most absorbent.

Building Visual Texture
The next layer will be a darker version of the base color, this time with a stencil placed onto the painted surface of the gel plate. The colored rice paper is placed over the fresh paint and stencil, then pressed firmly to pick up the pattern between the stencil cut-outs.

Once this paper is pulled and the stencil is removed from the plate, a “ghost print” remains on the gel surface. I like to use a sheet of deli paper to pick up this remnant, clearing the gel plate for the next layer.

And So On
The roll, press and pull sequence continues, using darker colors and varied stencils and stamps until a pleasing pattern is reached. The ghost print is cleaned off the gel plate after each pull, using the same piece of deli paper. When I decide it’s done, I have two sheets of colorful collage paper - one on rice paper and one on the deli paper.

Ready to Shred
While it is possible to create a stand-alone piece of art from the gel plate process alone, I prefer to tear them up and use the pieces as players in my current portrait-making passion. The possibilities are truly endless.