Tuesday, August 25, 2026
Many years ago I made a couple of linoleum cut prints which are long lost, and I really enjoyed that. I do have everything I need to do another linoleum cut if I wanted to, but I wanted to try a gel print this time around. So after about a dozen failures, I finally printed on my laser printer an SVG silhouette of my wife with her hat and glasses. Basically, I primed the gel plate with whatever foreground color I wanted—in this case it was black—then I laid down and made the first transfer, and when that was dry, I painted over it with cadmium yellow medium acrylic, flipped my plate around, and just let it sit and dry for about 20 minutes.
I’m rather happy with the results for a first time print. I kind of got the groove down now and I’ll probably make some more. I do enjoy taking my photographs and applying them as an SVG vector using Adobe Capture. I really enjoy the silhouette thing, so it was fun to do that, it really was.
The reason I named it 3:47 a.m. is because sometimes when my wife drives Lyft and Uber, she does it at the wee hours of the morning. She doesn’t wear sunglasses—I don’t think she wears glasses that protect her from things like headlights and stuff like that—but very often at 3:47 in the morning, she’s out there. So I wanted the feel of the lights—I guess it’s the a amber-looking lights and then the white lights and the streetlights—I wanted all that represented by yellow. And then I wanted all of this peaceful yet chaotic surrounding that she is looking through. A lot of times she has chaotic things happening—not like seriously bad or anything, she’s not in danger, but passengers who argue with each other or are on the phone arguing, or she’s taking people who’ve had a little too much to drink home and some of their darker side comes out. Sometimes even the fun side of them comes out. She has many stories, but the light only does so much through the darkness. So that’s kind of where I was going, and I chose yellow.
I will probably mount this on an 8×10 board, seal it up, and keep it—maybe put it on the wall. It’s kind of cool, I guess, I don’t know.
So there you have it: my first gel print. So I might start doing gel prints and lino cuts in the future. Maybe I should start making a few videos or something, I don’t know. I’ve got my YouTube channel, I’ve got followers, so who knows? I’m just an old guy trying to find balance right now in the universe, so okay, you guys take care, have a great day!
Mark