Addictive?

 Cutting stencils is becoming an addictive past time! I haven't even used this one below in art work yet, but it was fun to design and to cut it out. I think that I probably make all my stencils a bit too busy, but I can always remove bits later on if that's the case. They are A4 size, 21cm x 30 cm. which is one of the reasons why I don't like commercial stencils, they are too small and I like my art to be all my own work.

 

Stencils Again.

 After a short diversion with the collagraph, I designed and cut another stencil based on the original curled vine photo. Below is the stencil and one of the resulting prints.

I love the blue and orange together, and leaving some of the area white appeals, but over all I think that it might just be too busy. I suppose that it depends on what I do next with it however.

Challenge

It's been quite a long while since I constructed a collagraph plate, so it was interesting to get back into it recently in response to a challenge put out by the tutor of an online class that I did some time ago. The challenge was to use packaging materials to make a plate and to print it.  I used some expanding brown packing paper, the bottom of a take away container and some very small 'useless' cake papers to construct my plate.

I don't have a proper printing press, so I used my cold press laminator. However I soon found that I didn't have enough contrast between the textures, so I either got a very dense or very light print. The one below is of course the light one.

          I rather liked the look of the plate after the printing as it retained some of the black ink. (below)

After a bit of thought I decided not to try for a better print but to enhance the light one with water-colours, and I'm happy that I did as I rather like the result.

From Vine to Stencil.

 Above is a photo that I took recently of a vine 'coil', where the vine had wound itself around into an overlapping circle. It was quite an effort to take the picture against the sky to have a plain background, but I just managed it.

From that photo I made the coiled vine into a kaleidoscope diagram, thinking that it would make an interesting stencil. I would probably fill in the blank centre and some of the lines might be too fine to cut. I would also change the size to fit on a standard sheet of A4 paper. Of course I could use it in the square format too.

Here is the rectangular format made into a stencil. I wonder how that will work out in a gelatine plate print? Maybe if I had the patience I could have cut out the solid lines as a reverse design!

Stencil No 2.

After what I termed a success with my first full page stencil, I played around in Photoshop and came up with another idea for a stencil, again a manipulation of an earlier artwork of mine. This above is what I decided to work with for stencil No.2

Here is the finished cut stencil, a lot less fiddly than the first one, but I'm hopeful that it will still be a useful one.

Hmm, OK, but too much solid area I think. This one above was printed over an existing gelatine print, which shows the spirals seen in the orange areas.

This one is printed on a new white sheet of paper, but again the solid areas on the right need some work to open them up further.

Another version on a plate with 2 colours rolled out. Back to the cutting table I think to work some more interest into the areas on the right.
 

Finished!

 After several hours of hand cutting I have finished the stencil, albeit with a very sore finger as I mentioned in my last post. I think it was worth it however, as I'm very happy with the stencil and have had fun trying it out over old smaller gelatine prints and using the shape left on the plate to print new pieces altogether. The writing on the stencil is what was on the manila folder that I used to cut it from.

Halfway.

This looks as if it's about halfway cut out to me, and so far I'm very happy with how it's looking. Unfortunately I have one very sore finger as a result because of the pressure required to cut through the heavy paper in one clean stroke. I must try and hold the craft knife in a different way for the final half of the cutting I think.

 

Challenge?

 This is a copy of a gelatine print that I made, after I had manipulated it in Photoshop. I just loved the shapes revealed and thought that I might make the whole image into a stencil.

Next I turned the image into black and white, well shades of grey really, to make it clearer to trace out. I did lose a few shapes in the process, but I certainly have enough to be working with.

Here is the traced copy with the areas that I intend to cut away coloured in. Now that really is a challenge!