Hey everyone! In today’s Quick Tip Tuesday, I’m sharing a little backstory about why I started using random colors in my gel prints—and why I still use them almost six years later.
I was introduced to gel printing in June of 2020, when I took an art teacher’s professional development course.
Originally, the class was supposed to be in person, with all the supplies provided. Then COVID changed the plan, and the course moved online. Instead of walking into a fully stocked classroom, each participant received a 5x7 gel plate and one small bottle of craft paint.
That was it. The instructor told us a brayer would be helpful and to use whatever acrylic paints we already had.
I didn’t have any acrylic paints, but my husband Dan did. In fact, he had about 40 different colors, so I borrowed his.
I went into that first class almost completely cold, and I loved it from the first pull.
That summer, there wasn’t much else to do, so I made prints almost every day. But pretty quickly, I noticed that I kept reaching for the same small handful of colors. They were colors I liked, colors I understood, colors that felt safe.
Meanwhile, all these other paints were just sitting there.
I wanted to understand how color worked on the gel plate, because layering paint was completely different from the way I had used color before. But every time I stood in front of those paint tubes and tried to choose a few colors, I froze.
I come from a long line of indecisive people on my dad’s side of the family. We can barely decide when and where to have a family reunion, so asking me to choose from 40 paint colors was not exactly a recipe for swift action.
So I decided to randomly choose colors by writing the paint color names onto little wooden tiles and putting them into a coffee cup that had belonged to my paternal grandmother. Appropriate, right?
That coffee cup became the home of my color gods.
Instead of trying to make the perfect choice, I’d decide how many colors I wanted to use—three, four, sometimes five or six if I was feeling brave—and then I’d let the color gods decide.
Were all the early prints successful? Absolutely not. Some were definitely a little bleh. But the more I worked with random colors, the more I learned.
And that’s the part that hooked me: the decision was made for me, but the challenge was still there. I had to figure out how to make those colors work together.
After six years of gel printing, I still prefer using random colors over selecting them myself, because I would still take a ridiculous amount of time to choose colors. That’s just how I am.
I prefer letting that one decision be made for me. Then I get to do the part I really enjoy: figuring out how to make those colors sing.
And oddly enough, all that random practice has made me better at choosing colors intentionally, too. I may not want to stand in front of 60 paint colors and pick four from scratch, but if I need to demonstrate a specific idea in a workshop or Random Color Bingo session, I usually have a pretty good sense of which colors to grab.
The random practice built the color confidence.
That was a long way around for a quick tip, but here it is: if you ever get stuck before you even begin, try letting randomness make one decision for you. Pick three colors without judging them first, then see what you can do with them.
You may be surprised by what they teach you.
And no, Dan never got his paints back. 😉
If you’re curious, I’ve documented hundreds of those random color combinations in my color gods spreadsheet.
Diana
Thank you so much. Color is my favorite element of art. 😊 I would love to glaze with you during Thanksgiving week! 💕