Circles and Curves!

As you can see the latest challenge for the GPP Street Team is to SHAPE IT UP! I have finally settled on a shape that will allow me to prepare samples for a class that I will be teaching to fourth graders on Friday and that will qualify for the Challenge. This is a level of organization that does not usually befall me and I must admit that I am quite pleased with myself!!
The shape that I will be using is a circle, actually many different circles. The medium will be Gelatin Monoprinting on both fabric and paper. The paper pieces will become background pages for my visual journal after being used as samples in the Gelatin Monoprinting class that I will be teaching to EIGHTY- that is 8-0 - fourth graders!! The fabric pieces will be used as samples as well ,as I am being advertized as a Fiber Arts Visiting Artist. After the class I will use these printed pieces in fiber collage mini quilts and they may even appear on my Etsy site.
So here is the set-up:






Regular, nothing fancy, acrylic paints, a brayer, and a tray full of extra hard solidified gelatin as my printing surface. The printing tools are a toilet paper tube, bottle caps, plastic thread spools, bubble wrap and a paint brush end.




Here you can see some circles of plastic canvas and a clutch of spools that I taped together to create a specific pattern. this is all about making your own tools and using what you ahve. When I teach children I really try to empahsize that specialized tools are not needed to create art. Using things found around the home, with a parents permission , can yield totally wonderful results!!



The paint is loaded onto the gelatin and then subtracted using various "tools".. The tools are then relieved of the paint that they picked up by stamping on either paper or fabric, in this case, paper.



Here you can see the imprint left by the circles of plastic canvas, the bottle caps and the spools.

Here is the gelatin palte loaded with paint and then I used the end of a skewer to remove swirls and circles of paint. Below you can see the resulting prints first on paper,



And then on fabric. This fabric was intially printed with tiny black circles.




Here are some more fabric and paper printings!!



Yellow paper with orange paint.


White fabric with swirls thru pink orange and yellow paint and then more paint removed with large bubble wrap.



White fabric with paint removed using the circles of plastic canvas . THe small cluster of circles in the top right is the result of a group of bubbles that formed when the gelatin was formed. MORE CIRCLES!!!!!
( This slab of gelatin was made using KNOX gelatin made in a 1:1 ratio of gelatin to water and has been stable in the fridge covered with sran wrap for three weeks between uses.) Youc an be sure to see some of these prints in upcoming projects and I hope that everyone might try this really amazing technique for creating one of a kind prints!!! I will also be featuring pictures and tales of my teaching experience of this coming Friday, here on my blog!!

I also must thank Michelle Ward for offering this Challenge at this time as it really got the gears (more circles) turning to create some interesting tools for this class!!




(Addendum posted 1/29)
After recieving some wonderful comments, I realized that some of you may think that this is a regular deal with the 80 kids!! Not so much!!! this is a one shot gig and it is at a private school so I am pretty sure that I will have lots of help. to do this on a regular basis would be more than I could handle but I am soooo very grateful that there are wonderful teachers out there who do it all the time!!!