Gelli Arts Gelatin Printing Plates

This week in Art History, we turned some of Sonia Delaunay's color combinations into gelatin-plate monoprinted textiles!

The children in our homeschool co-op (ages 5-13) all loved it. This activity was inspired by both Sonia Delaunay (our current artist of the month) and the "Gel print colour play" lesson from Jayne Emerson's wonderful course, Gel Printing on and with Textiles).

We first read the Greek myth Orpheus and Eurydice, as retold by Sybil Grafin Schonfeldt, and talked about Orphism. I told them that Sonia Delaunay listened to colors, and put them by other colors that they wanted to sing and dance with. The students each chose 3 paint colors that were side-by-side in one of her pieces and did this activity.

detail from Market at Minho

It was so lovely and helped them to look at those colors in a new way. It took all worries about "form" out of the artwork, especially because you can't be too detail-obsessed with a brayer (which can have a mind of its own), and just turned it into playing with colors. And we had never printed onto fabric before, so that was exciting too.

Gelatin plate printing is absolutely addictive, and now I want more plates (even though I have six already 😂). So I popped onto Amazon to see what sizes and shapes are available. I like the brand Gelli Arts. Here goes!

Circle

4 inch

8 inch

Square

4 x 4 inch classroom set (20 plates)

5 x 5 inch classroom set (10 plates)

6 x 6 inch

Rectangle

5 x 7 inch

8 x 10 inch

9 x 12 inch

12 x 14 inch

You will also need acrylic paint and a hard rubber brayer. Lay the plate on wax paper while printing to protect it. Clean the plate off with baby wipes.

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