Boots 3
Gelli plate print
7×5″ Acrylic
©2018 Lucinda Howe

Boots 2
Gelli plate print
7×5″ Acrylic
©2018 Lucinda Howe

Boots 1
Gelli plate print
7×5″ Acrylic
©2018 Lucinda Howe

I’m back to Gelli plate printing this week. As you know by now, I like painting South Carolina’s state tree, the Sabal palmetto. For today’s experiment, I decided to use a drawing of the boots on the trunk of a palmetto tree from my travel journal as inspiration.

I started with this small (6×4”) drawing and enlarged it on my scanner. Then I cut a three-part stencil. I made a stencil for the background, blocking out the silhouette of the tree. I cut two other stencils for medium and dark values, allowing for some overlap, and planned to leave some of the white of the paper, giving me 3 values in the trunk.

Palmetto Boots
from travel journal
6×4″ Watercolor
©2017 Lucinda Howe

I printed several of these pieces today using the Gelli plate and acrylic paints. Each one is different depending on the colors and the order of printing. I may embellish some of these with ink drawing before I’m finished. The 3 prints above are my favorites so far.

Work in progress
Gelli prints drying on studio floor
©2018 Lucinda Howe

Work in progress
Gelli prints drying on studio floor
©2018 Lucinda Howe