Googie meets Gelli -- Retro 50s Design

Googie design from 1950s
I continue to indulge my Gelli plate addiction. And now my husband has given into temptation too. He bought his own Gelli Plate this weekend. We decided to try working on a shared theme for our practice prints -- Googie. 

No Autocorrect, I don't mean "Google." I mean "Googie" -- the Jetson-style design popular in the late 50s and early 60s, especially in California and the Southwest.

To start, my husband chose a Googie-inspired sign. I found Fabulous Fifties at the library, a large tome filled with photos of Googie-patterned products. These playing cards caught my eye.
Googie design from 1950s
To get a feel for the lines, I sketched the design. I left out the tiny bubbles -- too advanced for my skills, at this point anyhow.
Googie design from 1950s
I scanned my sketch and printed it on card stock. I picked up my trusty Xacto knife and, after a couple of false starts, produced a decent stencil.
My handmade stencil
I made many, many prints. Here are two worth sharing. I printed the Googie design on top of several other layers. 
Monoprint of 50s Googie design
The one below includes the trademark Googie "boomerang" shape.
Monoprint of 50s Googie design
I was happy with the results -- except for the objects flanking the bottle in the middle. They needed more definition. I grabbed a paint pen and started in.
Monoprint of 50s Googie design with painted details
I liked the white, but the black was too dark and opaque, making the print look flat. To recover the original depth, I added highlighting in the print below. It's my favorite.
Monoprint of 50s Googie design with painted details
What have you printed lately?

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Comments

  1. Hey, did you notice that some of your designs have kind of a young-woman/old-woman visual illusion to them? It flops from the middle vase to the outer vases. Pretty cool.

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    1. Hmmm, I'll have to look more closely. Or have whatever you're having...

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  2. Oh, I LOVE that pink one and the soft boomerang shapes. Need to play with my gelliplate a bit more ....

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  3. Your prints are wonderful! My favorite part of the story is the fact that you and your husband are creating together. I also like how you utilized classic inspiration, sketching and stencil-cutting to create your artwork. (Landed here because of the Gelli Arts link posted on Twitter . . . )

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    1. Thanks, Tricia. My husband and I have tried other types of media, but so far Gelli plate printing is the one that feels like we're really doing it together. We share a table (but not a plate), and afterward review one another's work.Our processes are different, and that's ok.

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