See how you can achieve an intaglio effect — without a press! — using a styrofoam
printing plate, a ballpoint pen, acrylic paint … and a Gelli® plate!
Intaglio (pronounced in-TAL-ee-oh) is a printmaking process using a plate that has been inscribed or etched. Ink is applied to the plate and pushed into the grooves. The plate is then carefully wiped to remove the ink from its surface, so that ink remains only in the incised areas. When the plate is put through a press, the high pressure pushes the paper into the grooves and transfers the ink to create an intaglio print.
We’re taking the basic concept of intaglio and adapting it to printing with Gelli®! With the Gelli ® plate, there’s no need for a press! You won’t have to meticulously wipe the plate for printing 🙂 And there’s no need for special inks — acrylic paint works just fine!
Follow these step-by-step instructions for creating an intaglio effect:
1. Use a ballpoint pen (or pencil or stylus) to inscribe a design into a styrofoam printing plate.
TIP: Once the styrofoam plate is ready, I like to stick it onto a piece of Press ‘n Seal (food wrap) to keep the back of the plate clean. Doing this is not essential to the printing process. But it keeps things from getting messy 🙂
2. Apply a generous amount of acrylic paint to the styrofoam plate.
3. Use a squeegee to spread paint across the foam plate. Make sure the paint is pushed down into the incised lines — while the surface is wiped as clean as possible.
Note: An old credit card or piece of mat board will work as a squeegee.
TIP: After you squeegee the paint onto the foam plate, you can roll the surface with a brayer. And instead of wiping the plate to remove surface paint — just pull a relief print! To do this — quickly cover the plate with a piece of paper and rub — and pull a print! The image in a relief print is reversed.
4. Flip the styrofoam plate onto the Gelli plate, paint-side down — and roll over the back of the plate with a clean brayer. The paint in the grooves will transfer to the gel plate. Remove the foam plate.
5. Cover the gel plate with your printing paper. Rub to transfer the paint — then pull your print.
Good things to know:
One of the wonderful benefits of this technique is that the final print is right-reading! That means the printed image is not reversed — and written words will read exactly as you wrote them 🙂
- The styrofoam plate is durable, so you can use your image over and over!
- Perfect for printing fabulous art journal template pages — creating lines and spaces — and you can work back into your prints!
- If you are working in layers, try an intaglio layer as your last one. That will give you a line drawing over a background image!
- Clean styrofoam food trays and plates will work for this technique! What a great way to upcycle those products 🙂
Foam printing plates, like those seen in this video, are available at Dick Blick, Daniel Smith, and many other art supply retailers.
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| Intaglio-inspired Gelli® print (black lines) — embellished with Distress Stains, Inktense pencils, Neocolor II crayons, rubber stamps and collage. |
Happy Printing!!
Wonderful idea, I have to give this a try.
I should love it to win this beaytiful give away, so I can make these beautiful creations.
Lovely greet
Marja
(marjascreativity)
I watched the video a few times. Such a great idea. Thanks for sharing and for giving someone a chance to win these great supplies.
This is fantastic. Each tutorial you post is better than the last! What a great printing tool! 😀
Such a cool tutorial, love that you can use it over and over again, I can imagine getting carried away and losing a fair few hours playing, Thanks for the chance to win such a cool prize 🙂
My gosh, this is INSANELY clever. SO clever! I can't wait to try it!!
Great Post! Have just started experimenting with gelatin as a printing medium, and absolutely love it! Am definitely giving this idea a go!! Thanks for the inspiration!
That looks like a lot of fun!!!
This is a great technique – Thanks for the chance to win this great prize and for the inspiration!
What a great idea! Shows how versatile the gelli plate can be!
I love this video – meeting with some artists tomorrow and can not wait to show them. Thanks for this blog
Thanks for the tutorial – can't wait to try this!
Brilliant tutorial got to try this.
I love watching what you do when printing.
This is a great process. Looks like great fun.
Very cool technique! I will definitely give this a try!
Oops – I guess it would be good to know who wrote the previous note 🙂
CONGRATS Kristin, you won!! Actually – your previous note above won so thank goodness you wrote this comment so I knew who it was!! Please email nkelley@gelliarts with the address where you'd like your prize shipped. Happy Printing!
Kristin!! Please reply – I haven't heard from you and don't have an email to contact you. Please reply by the end of the day or I'll have to pick a new winner 🙁 Hope to hear from you shortly!!
This is definitely something that I will try.
This is really clever, and a much "neater" way of adding lines than the "drawing on the back of the inked page" approach.
wow.another great technique….
What a cool technique!
Thanks for this tutorial. It would be great to win this.
Thanks for the demo – this looks like a fun one to try! Thanks for the opportunity!
Love the idea–I have long desired a Gelli plate! I tried to make a gelatin plate from scratch once and failed miserably. And the additional step of the foam plate makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing the idea as well as the opportunity to win!
This is so new to me. First I did not get it, I mean what was the big deal? Well, after I watched your video I want to immediately go purchase the Gelli plate. I absolutely want it all. Can't wait to create! Thank you for the opportunity to win this awesome giveaway. This art is soooooo cool.
msmith1@pbcgov.org
What a great post this was, would so love to own a gelli plate:)
Love the versatility!
i would love to win this, thank you for a great blog.
This is great. I really want to try this technique. I have used a Gelli plate and love it. (Please pick me!!!)
I just discoverd Gelli plates yesterday from a friends FB post. I do a lot of surface design/paper mosaic work and this looks really intriguing. Would love to give it a try.
The Gelli Plate is a wonderful product…so much fun…2 plates would be even better…hope I win!
Amazing! Thanks so much for sharing all these neat tips and tutorials! Yvonne
Can't wait to try this. Away on business, awake in the middle of the night and can't get up and play with my gelli plate. Sniff
My gelli plate is still sitting in its original packaging. Still haven't had time to play with it. Maybe if I win this mini plate I will make the time….They look like so much fun to play with,
Very neat idea! I could envision printing a high contrast image of a person's face, laying it onto the styrofoam, deeply outlining the areas with a pen to press the marks into the foam, then printing off of it 🙂 Or photos of your house, a landmark, etc 🙂
This is a very cool idea. I use my gelli plate constantly. I have come up with a number of interesting inventions using all kinds of odds and ends. I can't wait to try this.
I teach gelatin monoprinting using Gelli plates. Would love to win this and share with my students.
I just love your tutorials and learning new ways to use the Gelli plate! It is so much fun and I use it all the time! Now to try the Intaglio design…maybe with my new prize from you? Thanks!!
What a great idea! Can't wait to try this!
merci pour ce superbe tuto et peut etre la chance de gagner.
Thank you so much for this great idea! Good video to, it is a great tutorial . I got to try this at home!
Have a nice day.Greetings Miek
Joan
I am a printmaker and my main area is INTAGLIO – so I am delighted with this idea of yours…well done
thank you so much for creating the video and making it look so easy and do- able !!!
Hi,I removed my previous comment, because I don't know why it published "Unknown". I started experimenting with gelatin prints. I would love to have a Gelli Plate, but because of the current exchange rate between the South African Rand and US Dollar and the shipment, it is just too expensive.
The lettering will make this absolutely useful!!!
I've learned so much from reading this blog and the videos always inspire me to try new things! Thanks for the chance to win these great items.
This looks like serious fun and another layer for my journal pages!
I keep loving the Gelli plate and prints and would love to be part of the giveaway. Thanks for this great post. Lisa
more fun with a Gelli plate! can't wait to try it… thanks for the giveaway! I'm thinking this might also be a good way to print quilt labels… hmmmmm
Would love to have a play with this great product…thanks for giving us the chance to win a kit.
One more fun technique, awesome!