Join us for a fresh 5-month block starting in January 2027, where we will treat the gelli plate like a playful research lab, where we become visual foragers.
Together, we will extract the raw textures, structural patterns, and color moods of the landscapes around us—whether that’s a muddy woodland trail, a rocky hillside, or a favorite local coastline.
What you will build along the way:
• A Living Reference Deck: during every session, you will crop working snippets from your prints, mount them onto heavy card, and add them to a personal book ring.
You will use the back of the card to make note of colour mixes, thoughts, and "what if?" questions on the back. By the end, you’ll have a valuable, tactile tool to spark future studio work.
• Fresh Artworks: You will create unique, explorative finished pieces along the way, including multi-layered landscapes and paper-cut collages.
• Color Confidence: You will learn how to explore capture the value, and mood of a place without feeling trapped into copying literal colors.
The 5-Month Breakdown
Month 1 (January): Pocket Finds, Photos & Earthy Tones
• The Spark: Bring a handful of pocket finds from a walk (twigs, moss, bark) or phone photos of local surfaces (cracked earth, stone walls, winter frost).
• On the Plate: We will dive into subtractive printing—using our physical finds to lift and scrape paint off the plate to discover rich, unexpected ground textures.
• Color Focus: Mixing deep, rich shadow values and earthy tones without relying on simple black paint.
Month 2 (February): Organic Geometry & Complementary Contrast
• The Spark: We will look closely at the structural architecture of nature, focusing on shapes like leaf veins, seedpods, or sharp flint angles.
• On the Plate: You will tear and cut loose paper masks based on these shapes, exploring how to trap complex background textures inside or around clean outlines.
• Colour Focus: Playing with dynamic colour tension, learning how to make an organic shape pop off the page using contrasting colour weights.
Month 3 (March): Atmospheric Veils & Monochromatic Mood
• The Spark: Capturing the shifting, invisible elements of a walk—mist over a field, rain puddles, or morning haze.
• On the Plate: Moving away from heavy, solid paint. We will mix glazing mediums to print delicate, transparent ghost images onto tissue paper and vellum.
• Color Focus: Building quiet, atmospheric depth using limited colour palettes plus white, seeing how shifting from warmer tones to cool whites alters the emotional temperature of a print.
Month 4 (April): The Fresh Landscape Collage Lab
• The Spark: Shifting our focus to an expressive, full-scale landscape composition.
• On the Plate: A session of highly intentional printing. Using inspiration from cards so far, create fresh prints, using both opacity and transparency and textures from pocket finds.
• The Artwork: You will tear, slice and combine or weave your freshly printed sheets to build a larger-scale landscape or abstract collage on heavy paper, experimenting with the tension between organic torn edges and clean cut lines.
Month 5 (May): The Fusion Lab & The Great Shuffle
• The Spark: Breaking out of our comfort zones and playing with the element of chance.
• On the Plate: Your card deck becomes an active tool. We will unhook our rings, shuffle them, and do a "blind draw" of two random cards from different months. Your challenge is to create a brand-new, print forcing those two accidental techniques to live together.
• Colour Focus: "The Colour Swap." You will completely detach colour from reality, printing your chosen textures in wild, expressive, or unexpected colour pairings to see how value and texture carry a landscape all on their own.
When?
5 monthly sessions on a Friday morning from 10-1pm, starting January 2027
Dates TBC
How much?
£150 if all 5 sessions are booked in advance.
£40 per session if booked individually
All materials provided: including card stock and book rings.
Just bring your gel plate and roller.
