Every now and again I have a bit of a lightbulb moment - usually after a creative battle. This happened with the gelli plate. I'd seen some cool videos on YouTube of artists using gelli plates and decided I wanted to give it a go.

March 2025 I had a work trip to Madrid with enough time for a quick visit to one of the main art shops there. I came out armed with two slabs of gelatine that promised magical things. Magical things that JUST DIDN'T HAPPEN the first time I experimented with them, or the second time… so they were relegated to a drawer to be forgotten for a whole year.

I'm really not sure what prompted me to try them again, but one day just three months ago I spent a Sunday afternoon tinkering and that was it… I was off.

Most of the videos I saw on YouTube and Insta were of people using gellis to either create a collage, or they used them to lift high contrast photos as a background to work with (you need to see it to understand it).. I didn't want to do either of those things.

It was only when I saw an artist called Alex Poyner making lovely monoprint pieces using screenprinting that a little switch flicked on inside my head and I started percolating the idea of how to do something similar with gellis. And something clicked… I've since been trawling through my sketchbooks to find reference sketches I can use as a base and I'm having so much fun experimenting with different materials. Acrylics are the standard but I'm finding soft pastels also give some very cool results!

Watch this space!