Gelli Arts® and Spellbinders®: Stunning Portraits by Mansi Bhatia

Hi everyone!

It’s Mansi with another process on how to use your Gelli Arts® plate to create stunning portraits without doing an image transfer (which I know can be hit or miss)! For this technique, I worked with Spellbinder Jane Davenport’s beautiful line of pastels that glide ever so smoothly on both the gel plate and cardstock.

I hope you enjoy the detailed process and give it a try!

I placed my Gelli Arts® gel plate on top of the magazine page and traced the face with an acrylic
marker. Next, I added in colors following the contours of the magazine image.
Once I had a base layer of colors, I peeled off my gel plate and continued
“painting” on it. When I felt I had enough color, I used a brayer to spread out
a thin layer of white acrylic paint and pulled a print.

My first print unfortunately
didn’t have much of an outline but the pastels showed through beautifully. I
realized that my acrylic paint layer had been too thin, so it pulled only the
pastels lying on top of the gel plate but not the marker ink. Not to be
disheartened, I continued pulling ghost prints.

From one tracing, I had three
beautiful portraits (instead of just the one you would get were you to try
typical image transfers).

I went on to add some more layers
of pastels on each of these monoprints, rendering unique looks to each of them.
For someone who doesn’t do portraits, I found this technique to be an amazing
aid in learning more about face shapes, contouring, layering and more! So much
so, that I am now creating a journal of portraits!