Acrylic Gel Image Transfers

Here is an image I worked on today inspired by Randel Plowman's lovely things, at A Collage a Day.

A Collage a Day, Randel Plowman

I was thinking of project ideas for high school art students and Randel did a very successful workshop in collaging with a highschool art club. The acrylic gel image transfers shown in the top image work very well with collage process.

1) Collect images that are of suitable size for your collage scale. Photocopies and newspaper images work well. Consider the nature of the contrast that will be established with the material you will glue on to.....I purposefully chose things that are dark black so they will show up well.

2) Paint over the area you wish to use with acrylic gel. Put in on a bit heavily and let it dry overnight. If you are considering doing a lot of work this way, it might make sense to make a whole archive of images.....cover them with gel, let dry, so you can choose from many possible images when it is time to collage them into the image.

3) Submerge the dried gel images into warm water and let sit for 5 minutes. Gently rub off the paper from the back of the gel images, keeping the material wet as you do this. Set your gel images on paper toweling to dry.

4) The edges of the gel images may get a bit ragged from the 'rubbing off' of the support paper. You may wish to tidy them up by trimming with scissors.

5) Glue your gel image bits into your collage.....you'll have an almost perfectly transparent effect (depending on how well and gently you remove all the paper from the back)!


My image at the top has 2 image transfers glued in. I like this method very much and look forward to using it in some collages. I think my students will also like doing this!