Lessons from a Gel Plate Crime Scene

If you’re new to gel printing, it can feel like the hard lessons never end. You’re right. They don’t. Welcome to the art that gives and gives…mostly tears to start with.

Gelli prints sound simple:

• Paints
• Papers
• Gel plate
• Brayer

Abracadabra, right?

What could possibly go wrong?

• Transfers that don’t transfer consistently
• Papers that tear like, well… wet papers
• Brayers that get lumpy, sticky, or both
• Paints that clearly have a mind of their own
• Terrible color choices (my personal superpower)

If you actually broke these down into all the ways gel prints can betray you, the list of potential disasters would run into the dozens. Possibly hundreds, depending on caffeine intake.

This very morning, I decided to “quickly” experiment with combining the elegant curve of a dolphin on a round plate and a wave stencil I borrowed from a friend. A simple little side project, I told myself. Fast. Fun. Cute. Done.

Blah.

As the image transfer designer for Gel Inspirations, I have done hundreds of transfers. Easy peasy, right? Yeah, it was… until I pulled off the stencil and half my transfer came off with it.
Excuse me? Dozens of transfers a month, and I somehow missed that dried transfers sticking to stencils was even a thing? Apparently, yes.

None of this is meant to discourage you. It’s to remind you that this is the deal. Think of the famous Randy Pausch quote from The Last Lecture:

"The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough."

How badly do you want to be a gel print God? In this artform, the “bricks” are tiny and ridiculous: shredded dolphins, rebellious rice papers, stencils that skate across the plate like they’re trying out for Olympic ice dancing teams… until they sick too much, etc.

What absurd little hard lesson will I bumble upon next? Spin the wheel.

Don't let it stop you. Michelangelo surely would have annihilated a few dolphins on his way to greatness.

In Gelli art you are never going to run out of things that go wrong. That’s the good news. You’ll also never run out of chances for happy accidents. Learn to laugh at the bad messes, celebrate the weird ones, and plow through the chaos.

After all, gel printing is cheaper than therapy.

Okay, not really but…