Inkjet Image Transfers on the Gel Plate SUCCESS

While I am leaving the inkjet prints on various papers to dry for a few days, I decided to revisit another experiment I first wanted to try a few years ago. I can tell you it was a few years ago because I looked up the date I bought the freezer paper on the big river, and that was December 2021.

So in December 2021 I was experimenting with various techniques for doing image transfers of my drawings using an inkjet printer and a gel plate. I had some success with a couple of papers, but it seems that my wonderful squirrel brain must have zoomed off on some other tangent at some point after I purchased the freezer paper to try, and before I opened the freezer paper at all. I know this because when I opened the box yesterday, the roll was still sealed with a little sticker, and had never been used.

I have done monoprinting with freezer paper in the dark and distant past, last century in fact, back in the days when it rained consistently in Scotland, and my hips were snakelike rather than whatever the fuck they are in this perimenopause endurance test.

Monoprinting with freezer paper is one of those old techniques that is simple, accessible, and cheap, and I don’t think it has been entirely replaced by modern commercial gel plates, freezer paper and gel printing are, as I proved to myself today, natural bedfellows.

I spent the whole day playing with printer settings, gel plates, a freezer paper plate I made that is gloriously reusable, and trying out various ways of getting my original graphite sketch turned into a image transfer that goes onto a gel print.

A few different things happened, and I took good notes all the way through (I am very good at going on experimental art adventures, not taking notes, having magical results, and having zero idea how to replicate the damned thing). I now have more questions than answers, because even more possibilities opened up.

But, one thing that came to pass was the successful inkjet printer image transfer of one of my own drawings onto gel prints:

Woo and may I say Hoo!

Next up I will be repeating the same process to make sure I have written everything down correctly, and then trying a few next steps, but so far it’s looking like I’m going to be a very happy camper.

Til the morn,

Suzanne

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