Visual Artist
Why do I like to use homemade stencils and stamps, when there is an abundance of stencils and stamps out there? I like to create my own designs to produce artwork which is original or personal to me.
Homemade Stencils
A wide variety of ready made items can be used as stencils.
To name a few…
Making your own stencils.
You may think, why go to the trouble of making your own stencils when you can just buy them. Apart from saving you money, they are unique. The designs or artwork you create is your own and personal to you. There are many ways to make stencils. In this blog I will talk about making stencils using a glue gun.
Part 1 – Making stencils with a glue gun.
The glue gun stencils were made with a gelli plate in mind, but can be used for any stencil work…
I realise, there are many variations to how acrylic paint reacts and dries, such as temperature, humidity and climate. This acrylic paint trial on a gelli plate was purely how the applications worked for me, and mostly based on using a brayer to apply the paint.
Inexpensive craft paint is thin and spreads very well, only a small amount was needed eg. the smallest amount you could get out of the bottle as its tipped and smeared off directly onto the plate. Craft paint dries very quickly, and the print was sometimes quite pale…
A Gelli plate is for creating monoprints without a press. The plate I am using is produced by Gelli Arts, and is about 3/4 of an inch thick. Gelli plates can be homemade using gelatine but are not very durable. They need to be kept in a refrigerator and only keep for about a week. Recipes for this can be found on line.
Before purchasing a Gelli plate, I watched several demos on YouTube. Most of them were about creating patterns and backgrounds, using stencils and stamps. This method is very effective with the plate. However, I want to create something more original…
What can I do with this? I haven’t used charcoal since uni, over twenty years! For a start, I needed some paper without a smooth surface, such as watercolour or pastel paper. I know the paper needs to have some ‘tooth’, in other words some texture or roughness for the charcoal to grip. If the paper is smooth, the charcoal will kind of fall off, and smudge much more easily.
I rummaged about in my studio and managed to find an old A3 sketch pad that had a bit of a rough surface. I also found a charcoal pencil and a kneadable eraser, which can be used to remove charcoal to emphasise hi-lights and lighter areas…
Fens nature reserve is fairly close to where I live, in the Midlands. There are several man made pools over there, which were dug out to keep the Stourbridge canal full in the days of canal transport.
The pools are now home to ducks, swans, coots, moorhens and an abundance of wildlife. Beyond the pools lies my favourite field. The field runs down the reserve from what appears to be the highest point. In early summer the field is white with Oxeye daisies, a sign that summer is here. In late summer, the tall grass that has taken over from the daisies, becomes dry and silvery in the sunlight, then in the evening as the sun begins to set, the whole field glows like gold. I have tried to capture this in a painting using acrylic. I wanted to recreate the feelings as I gazed over the field on a summer evening…