Saturday, July 11, 2009

stenciling

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My present spraying work surface is a piece of bulletin board on a rickety card table. I covered the bulletin board with kraft paper, so I could keep what randomly showed up there.

Here are my favorite bits of this piece of paper.





I'm thinking masks, over the interesting parts, but haven't done anything about it yet.....



Our library sets aside a large room in the basement to sell used books. Some of the books were withdrawn from the library's collection, but most were donated by patrons. The Friends of the Library donate the labor (and probably a lot of the books!), and the money goes to the library.

Today I visited the sale, looking for large books to rip up and spray on.

Many of them were too nice to do that to, so it took me a while to choose a few.

What a cheap way ($2 per book) to get hundreds of pieces of paper!

As it happens, I didn't use any of the new-to-me books today. The dictionary I tore up and sprayed today was in a drawer in our study. I came across it this afternoon, and realized that we never use a paper dictionary any more, as we always use the web dictionaries. (We probably have more than a dozen English dictionaries in the house, nevermind the French ones, so losing one or three or five.... to art projects is ok. Not to mention that space in a drawer is excellent!)

The paper in this one was heavier than some dictionaries, so I decided to experiment on it.

This week I practiced stencil cutting on a silhouette of my corgi boy.

I lost him to what was probably kidney failure four weeks ago tomorrow, and I can't bear to work with his pictures yet. But if I instantly turn them into silhouettes, so I can't see his face, I can work with that.

I rather like these ... he is gone, not present. Only the memory remains..... :-(





This one is my favorite.

I had some ideas before I started about what I wanted to do. I sprayed some pages through different textures -- the largest plastic needlepoint canvas, the checkerboard shelf liner, the circles -- but none of that appealed.

I really liked the mask and stencil of the cat, stacked together on the cutting mat, so I decided to try that.

I put the mask down, and lightly sprayed. For light spraying, I like the effect of not holding the button down very hard, so it's more ... spattery ... than misty.

Then I arranged the stencil over the masked area, shifted it just a bit down and over, and sprayed.

I like this effect. Especially for this application.



I miss him.






Ok.



I have got to get some of those bed-lifter-upper thingies to put under the legs of my rickety card table. Working at its current height is killing my back.........

I'm thinking I am ready to quit, but then .....

You will remember this, from my first spraying session.





I tossed this purchased-and-sprayed-over mask on it, and then I actually *saw* it on it............





I like something that contrasty......... And so I put a kitty on.





Ok. But now we need more black stuff..........

Oops, got a little carried away with the spraying on that one flower.....



I never use words, but ... seems like perhaps this is crying out for one......

.

3 comments:

Jennevieve said...

oh my, is that a corgi!?? I grew up with a corgi! Adore them! Ha ha and orange is my favorite color too!
You seem to be doing quite well for having just started with the stenciling.

Ruth said...

Love the corgi and love the experiment, especially the last one. One thing that Mary Ann is teaching us is to just keep going when we don't like it or we aren't sure that it's done.

I need orange said...

Yes, Jennevieve, that's my last corgi. I've had three. Clearly you have very good taste, as you like corgis and orange.... :-)

Thanks for the nice words. Stenciling (or any kind of painting, really) is a new medium for me, but I know a lot about color and value and composition from doing other things, and all of that translates....

My knowledge of how the materials will act, and react, is low, but if I do a lot of experimenting, I can usually get something I like.


Thanks to you, too, Ruth!

One of the things that I really hope to incorporate into the way I work is some of Mary Ann's easy experimentation, and her willingness to try anything that takes her fancy, rather than viewing anything that's begun as something to "not ruin."

I have been working mostly in Photoshop Elements for a while, and I can't ruin anything in there. Back to hard-copy media, I can ruin things, so it's hard for me to keep experimenting, especially after I begin to like what I'm working on......

I hope to be a bit more brave, a bit more like Mary Ann.

:-)