Paper and Threads

I LOVE Melanie Testa's online Stencil Magic class.  Afte finishing the 4 classes, I feel as if I've learned enough to create multiple types of stencils and to develop many different images.

I reworked another doodle and made a stencil from one of the drawings in the lower right corner of this page.   The intersections of the grid lines were left blank on the stencil so I can add circles or squares and paint them individually.   

Here is the stencil print which I painted in red and green - might be useful to make cards, tags, and wrapping papers at Christmas if I use these colors.

I made another stencil, inspired by an image from Owen Jones' book The Grammar of Ornament (1856) and republished by Dover Books (1987).  It was printed with gouache, using a dauber, and the image is much crisper than my first prints.

I followed Melly's directions to use photos as inspiration for stencils, and here is my penguin - first my photo from the Central Park Zoo, and then my images.

From left to right: My Photoshop manipulated photo to convert it into Black and White as a stencil design, My first print from the stencil, and a Bookmark that I made using the penguin image.

I did another exercise using one of my first stencils.  I painted watercolor paper wet-on-wet to create background color.  Then I traced one of the images from an earlier stencil with a watercolor pencil and painted the negative space around the image.  Finally, I added squares using a piece of construction netting as a stencil and traced and painted circles through a commercial stencil.