A couple of weeks ago I was playing around with my Gelli Art Printing plate and I happened to look over and see some charcoal sticks that were sitting on my table. I thought to myself- “Hmmmmm, I wonder if charcoal would work with the Gelli plate?”. I love the look of charcoal, so I decided to try with the powdered form. I grabbed the powdered charcoal jar and started sprinkling it onto my gelli art plate on top of the wet paint and a paper stencil. I ran a couple of prints and loved the way the charcoal interacted with the paint! Sometimes it colored the paint by mixing in, and sometimes with made cool dots and holes in the paint.
Here are a couple of the prints I made with the paper stencil:
I really liked the backgrounds, but the paper stencil was falling apart and driving me crazy, so I just went ahead and printed some “plain” backgrounds. I think these will make great collage fodder and cool backgrounds for drawings!
At the end of my playtime I wiped the leftover charcoal off the plate with a baby wipe. I wasn’t sure if it would harm the plate and certainly did not want to take a chance!! If you have some charcoal or graphite powder give it a try!
