I  created an animated PSA (Public Service Announcement) using monoprints. The monoprints of face masks and viruses in this gallery were made using a gel plate. I  experimented with gel plates in the print studio, and I  worked with impressions of paper face masks & virus stencils, combined with acrylic paints, acrylic paint pens, stencils, and maculature.  I liked the images I produced as I got the hang of how the gel plates work. I enjoyed the lovely facture of the printed surface that results from how much of the paint skin adheres to the paper. The finished prints look like brass or stone rubbings, clay or plaster casts, embossments, x-rays, photograms, cyanotypes–they have this old school photographic process look to them. Because you are creating a skin made from layers of acrylic paint and then transferring this skin to paper, they also remind me of Polaroid skin transfers onto paper. I have figured out a few tricks along the way, the right kind of paper to use, how different acrylic mediums work with the gel plate, and how to get the full skin to transfer off of the gel plate and onto the paper. I have hand printed over 160 of these mask & virus  monoprints. As I was editing the photos of the first 80 prints, I fast forwarded through the images and noticed that the images made a cool animation. So…I went back and produced another 80 images to actually create an animation– with each of the 156 prints becoming animation cells. I hand printed each one-of-a-kind monoprint cell using a gel plate and barren with acrylic paints, acrylic paint pens, pochoir, & maculature on masa paper. Each cell has a title stenciled on it with spray enamel. (9″h x 12″w image on 11″h x 15″h paper, 2021)
See the previous gallery to view the PSA video.