2023 I took part in the printing festival "Feste Drucken" again (of course I did, how could I miss that!). One workshop of the festival was about experimenting with gel print – which is a monotype technique using a gelatine plate. If you search online you’ll find plenty of examples, videos and instructions about that technique.

Since then I knew monotype on glass or wood. On a gel plate it is much easier to create imprints of objects or to use stencils. There is no printing press needed and it works well with just acrylic paint (can be the cheapest). The process is very quick and so it is easy to experiment and play around without thinking too much.

The festival’s motto this time was »In between«, and there was a very interesting lecture about white space as a design tool. Inspired by it I used the gel print to experiment with white space, positive and negative forms and transparent colour layers. I mostly used paper snippets that were leftovers, creating these abstract compositions. It was very refreshing and I had a lot of fun.

Unfortunately I only have these low quality photos of the prints. I hope you still get an idea of what they look like.

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My sketch booklet number 19 is filled! One of my goals for last year was to draw more in my freetime, and I think that worked quite well. I drew less my surroundings and what I was seeing (though I missed it a bit), but instead more what was inside of my head. As you might notice, I was thinking a lot about the relationship between nature and humans. Some of these sketches turned out a bit too finished, they could be more sketch-like. So this might be my goal for this year: to continue drawing in my sketchbooks in a more loose style, with less perfectionism.
This booklet did travel to Luzern in Switzerland, to Stralsund and Nürnberg. The media I used were different types of fineliners, brush pens, coloured pencils aswell as ink.

#skizze #sketch #zeichnen #illustration #skizzenheft #skizzenbuch #sketchbook #festedrucken #stralsund #buntstifte #colouredpencils #tusche #ink