Sunday 13 April 2014

Gelliping at Art van Go

Lets start with a definition:  'gelliping' - a verb, meaning to play with, paint on, obsess over and generally have a jolly good time with a gelli plate.
 
And that was the essence of the workshop I taught at gorgeous Art van Go last week. We were working with canvas and started by putting molding paste through stencils on to paper and then subsequently cutting or tearing these papers up and re-arranging (you can see my patchwork roots here!). These bits were arranged and then stuck down with gel matte medium (aka 'sticky under' )  onto a blank stretched canvas. Areas were also worked with appliglue to write and draw dimensional lines. We were blessed with sunshine and so were able to put these outside to dry .. hence the rather gorgeous shadows on some of these ...
 







 
this shadow is so beautiful that I suspect this image will get repurposed somewhere along the line

 
While these were drying, we got down to some gelliping, using a variety of green stuff snitched from the AVG garden, together with stencils, stamps and textured rollers. As is my favoured method, we printed using opaque fabric paints and then washed over those prints using dye. We also used markal blender and  neocolour 1 to add some resist in the 'negative' prints. If all that sounds like gobbledygook .. scroll back through the blog posts for more information.
 
Then - whilst gelli prints drying, the girls painted their now textured canvas, using a mixture of acrylics, fabric paint and metallic powders .. I didn't manage to catch many before they got prints added .. but here are a few .. yum
 
 
you can see we worked in several layers .. adding glazes and metallic highlights as we went .. brilliant fun
 
 
 
 
many of the canvas could stand as pieces in and of themselves at this point and in fact one student (my wild child Christine) did just that .. just adding huge dimensional glops of appliglue and many many layers of glazes rubbed back to produce these two beautiful pieces ..
 
 
 
 
We also looked in between times (when I thought they looked as though they might think they were going to relax) on getting rid of blank sketchbooks and using those gorgeous beasts to actually serve their purpose .. we dyed, glued, pasted and scribbled in out sketchbooks .. realising that we can do exactly as we like .. they are ours ..
 
 
 
 
 
 
and also started mounting our treasured gelli prints on to the canvases










 
 


 
what I find so exciting is that the pieces evolving are all so very different and nothing like mine .. I can see the artist in each of the students finding a safe place to have a voice and that makes me a very happy girl
 
we looked at using neocolour 1 crayons, appliglue and glazes again to add definition, contrast and detail to the pieces .. it can make an amazing difference  .
Obviously the girls didn't finish completely in two days - especially as they were all working on at least two separate canvas and their sketchbooks .. but they got an amazingly large amount done

 
 






 
 

 
 
 


 
 

 
  
 





 
 
I think you have to agree these are quite stunning .. and I am certain all the girls will finish them by adding stitch .. and then send images to me!! - please .. I would hang any of these on my wall, with immense pride. All the class worked incredibly hard and were no doubt exhausted  .. but what brilliant results and what a lovely group .. thank you all.
I promised I would go through how I alter images on the computer to get further leverage from my prints .. and that will be the next post. For now though .. thank you for joining me ...  Hilary xx

23 comments:

  1. You had some very gifted people there Hilary. Didn't they do well?

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    1. they did brilliantly ... that is my job xx

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  2. What a fantastic range of work. You are very generous in sharing you techniques on line, but nothing can match a workshop for learning. I love the look of the busy tables.

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    1. You are right Jill .. you can explain, but watching and experiencing are just so different .. the tables are just a riot of colour and activity aren't they? xx

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  3. Lovely work, and I like the idea of Gelliping. Have used molding paste to make my own texture plates, but need to give this a try. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Molding paste is another really versatile multipurpose product Beverley .. making these textured papers to then use later (in all sorts of ways) is a wonderful warm up activity xx

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  4. Stunning and so jealous. Are you going to be repeating this workshop??? PLEASE!! Sharon
    I'm only anon cos I can't figure out or understand the rest of them.

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    1. I understand about the anon bit .. girl after my own (technically challenged) heart. I am trying to find another day with AVG Sharon .. might be next year though .. if you are anywhere near Redditch, I am running a repeat of the three day summer school - which is an extended version of this, on 29/30 September and 1 October 2014. I say near - although the point of it being three days is to make it a possibility for those travelling .. I do have students coming from Belgium and Inverness!! Details and booking are in my website shop . www.hilarybeattie.co.uk xx

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  5. What a productive and fun-filled workshop, I can feel the energy from here :-)

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  6. Just wonderful! What a great class I so wish I could have been part of it.
    Beautiful work by everyone!

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    1. thank you .. they did me absolutely proud! xx

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  7. Fabulous work, hope you feel proud, too ;)

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    1. Oh I do Emma .. I feel like a mother chicken at the end of these classes! xx

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  8. Hi Hilary just wanted to say that as one of your students on this workshop what an amazing and rewarding workshop it was!! You are so generous with your knowledge and I would recommend that anyone who has the opportunity to go on this course do so it is so inspiring!!! Thank you Karen (can't workout the name thing either!!!)

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    1. I think google make it hard on purpose .. I have lost all my email feeds and it is meant to be my blog? how does that happen? Anyway - anonymous Karen .. that is such a lovely comment - thank you for making time to leave it. You were a lovely group .. which made the day very special. xx

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  9. Ah, my original comments singing your praises Hilary, appears to have got lost in the ether. I was just saying that it was a great course, learning about new Gelli techniques and being able to dye with gay abandon was fantastic. Some great work was produced and it was very informative - I will take Sticky Over and Sticky Under with me as I venture into a New World. I would recommend a class with Hilary. It's non-stop and great fun. And failing that, the Make it Personal book has so much packed into it.

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    1. oh goody .. a new sticky world, where the duffer is free to roam! Met you lovely mum this weekend Sam .. getting to know all the family .. kids next! xx

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  10. I just became a follower OOOOOOOOOOOOh i wish i cold be one of your students. Did a great job. I love the way your work.!! Have a nice day Miek

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