Stencils

Recently, I’ve taken up making stencils a lot more than I used to. I’ve always made stencils to print shirts. Now I’m making patches from old pants, and stencils for activities of questionable legality.

I make my stencils out of anything I have at hand. Index cards, printer paper, sketchbook paper, photography backdrop paper… It really depends on the size and the durability I want.

Something I’m going to sew through like I did with the skull shirt, a light paper is best so that it can be torn out of the stitches.

For patches, something that covers the entire patch or is shaped like the patch (for alignment purposes) is best. A stencil that covers the entire patch is good if one is using spraypaint, something that I’m experimenting with, because it prevents overspray. A stencil the same size and shape is good for spraypaint or handpainting with acrylic or fabric paints.

For tagging, something that can be folded into a notebook, or rolled into bundle like an art student carries. I have an index card with my signature cut into it. I use an index card because it is small, reusable, and rather modular.

Spraypainting patches is interesting. I’m using Montana artists spraypaint (in black and pink) and Krylon indoor silver metallic paint. My fabric, so far, has all been worn black corduroy. The silver washes out of fabric unless a base coat or three of the artists’ paint is put down.

This is my biohazard patch and my signature patch. The biohazard stencil is cut from a piece of printer paper, and the signature from an index card. Both of these were cut from a bigger patch that I made with just the silver spraypaint and then washed, only to discover that the silver washed right out.

These are the same patches, stitched down over some decay in a pair of pants. They’ve been washed once. One can see that the silver is coming off a little bit and exposing the base coats of paint. I used one layer black, one layer pink, and two layers silver. On the signature, I moved the stencil a little bit, and the layers got rotated from each other, so now I know not to check the layers until I’m done.

Here is the card I use for my signature. You can see how much overspray you can get with such a small stencil.

Overspray from index card use can be seen here, too. I made the “calm yo tits” for my room-mate, it being something of a joke between us. The Above guy is /everywhere/, and is getting kind of annoying.

Stencilling things on walls is a while different kind of operation. Too much paint and it drips, too little and it looks even worse. And then there’s the whole stealth element.

Read Or Die is cut out of sketchbook paper, sprayed in black, and the rays are handpainted in red acrylic. I didn’t use my signature stencil on this one because I incorporated it into the design.

With walls, stencils, and spraypaint, there is a limit to how thin and long one can make  their lines and have them look good. In Read Or Die, the lines that make up the books are too long to support themselves. Especially in the top one, a spot that looks like overspray is clearly visible. That is where the stencil pulled away from the wall and the paint went under it. That can be cured by putting a connector across the line, so that it holds itself together in the middle. Those lines are about 1/4 inch thick, and my connectors are usually about 3/16ths inch wide.

Brain Corals

Not really brains, not really corals. They’re adorable brain corals!

I decided to make these after my visit to the exhibit at the National History Museum. When I saw the exhibit, my mind exploded, to put it mildly. I also wanted to jump into the display and become one with it. The nice lady wouldn’t let me do that. (aww)

This is the first one. It was so adorable I had to make many many more.

This one was nearly impossible to photograph. Too much white. It’s also less fluffy than it looks, even though I used the softest yarn ever.

This one is really coarse despite being made of chenille and eyelash yarns. It’s also nearly a perfect sphere (under these conditions).

My dad asked for this one. I need to do some in other bright colors.

The camera washed this one out really badly. It’s as saturated as the sunburst above, just not orange.

And I made some kelp. Kelp are lame and not really kelpy.

I created these by making a four or five chain loop, doing as many single stitches through the loop as I could, three or four double stitches through each of the singles, and 3-5 doubles through each of the previous doubles, and 3-5 singles in those doubles. The second row of doubles OR the outer row of singles can be optional. It really depends on the density of the yarn and how much time you want to spend on these. I’m a very good crocheter, so I can do one of these in about 20minutes, but if you’re a n00b or haven’t crocheted in a while, they could easily take an hour. They also use up a LOT of yarn, so they’re great for using up scraps from old projects.

They are quite similar to the beaded hyperbolic flowers I made a while ago, because of all the same reasons.

Green Mohawk Girl

Yeah, I’ve been doing art again.

The scanner got all up in my shading so I am rather unhappy with this instance of the picture. I’m also not happy with the irl shading, but it’s much better.

Medium: pen, pencil, charcoal on sketch paper

Bulletproof Heart

<<hold your heart into this darkness>>

My silly scanner cut off the top and bottom 1/4 inches. And destroyed the texturing in the darkness. *glareface* Click for bigness, as usual.

Bowls

Another blue bowl, and a purple one. Violated every rule in the book to get these made in one evening for gifting the next day… whatever

Color mixes

• Interior blue is 1:1 blue:silver
• Exterior blue is straight up blue
• Interior purple is 3:1 purple:silver (could cut back on the purple a little but that makes it a little too light for my tastes)
• Exterior purple is just purple
• The edges are black.
• The dragonfly is white.

Painting techniques

• Interior colors are dry brushed to get a burnished look. This involves just barely getting paint on the brush and then brushing it on as fast and thin as possible, creating many layers.
• Exterior colors were just brushed on. Since they can’t be seen, they are darker and less shiny than the interior colors and have a slightly uneven effect.
• Dragonfly- sharpened the end of a skewer to lethal sharpness and dotted the paint on to get the finest line evar.
• The varnish is two layers brushed on. I didn’t try to keep airbubbles out but my varnish is liquid enough to not hold bubbles.

Pictures-
Taken before leaving for school. Sorreh.

Tinder’s Candle

I can do charcoal too!
This is my first foray into preserving my charcoal drawings with a fixative.
Warning: vapor may cause flash fire. Contains: acetone, petroleum distillates, xylene.
and y’wonder why art-people are all crazy?
(picky after the break- I scanned it at about a bazillion dpi so it might take a while to load)

Swirled Egg

This is why I made the shells found Over Here.

I use them as bases to make strangely patterned (but not yet textured) eggs out of polymer clay. This one is from my swirly phase (quite a while ago, at this point) and only recently got finished after I bought varnish, sanded it properly, and made a varnishing stand for it.

The process to make one of these is pretty simple- get some idea of what you want the egg to look like, execute it, sand the living daylights out of it, varnish, and wander around looking for someone to show/sell it to.

My idea for this one came from a pen and ink drawing I did several months before that I thought would adapt well to being round. And digitized too, since I can no longer find the original scan. Executing the idea was the hardest part simply because of the amount of detail. The clay had to be rolled to about 1/8th inch thick, cut into very thin strip in some cases, and then stuck together on an egg. Then the egg is baked according to package instructions, ignored in the bottom of a box (these are pretty fragile) for a month or so, then sanded. Polymer clay has to be wet sanded, which just means that it has to be sanded in or under water, otherwise the sandpaper will clog up. It /really helps/ if you have sandpaper that doesn’t come apart when it gets wet, but if you don’t, no worries. Start with a fairly coarse grit (I’d say about twice a coarse as a new emery board) and work your way down to crocus paper (the finest sandpaper available). My crocus paper comes apart in water so I wound up using the grit and the end of my finger to sand the egg instead. That left the egg a horrible red color, but very very smooth. To get the red stain off, I used an old toothbrush and new toothpaste (a very light abrasive) to get the red out. Then I washed it off, dried it out, bent up a stand out of 10 gauge copper wire, varnished it (try not to let it drip like I did, it looks bad), and left it sitting on my desk for lack of anything better to do. I might make a real stand for it some day.

This is before I varnished it.

And this is after. I like the shiny!

I use Sculpey polymer clay and PLAID outdoor satin sealer (polyurethane).

Apocalypse: Gerard Trignac

Went to an art exhibit at Vassar College quite a while ago and saw At The Heart of Progress: Coal, Iron, and Steam since 1750: Industrial Imagery from the John P. Eckblad Collection ( http://fllac.vassar.edu/exhibitions/index.html ) and attended the lecture series that opened the exhibition (yeah, it was that long ago!). The lectures were generally well done and informative, though one speaker seemed completely unprepared. However, people talking are boring and pretty pictures are not and so I spent an hour or so wandering around in the gallery taking notes on techniques and the artists and their work. One picture, by Gérard Trignac,  particularly caught my eye as it was a place I’d like to play in, if it existed.

This is his site, this is the picture that caught my eye (i can haz playground?), and this is the place I want to live if I can’t have my castle. I’d highly recommend wasting an hour there drooling on the awesomeness. It’s pretty awesome.

dang! the links worked (or they did when I checked them. results may vary.)!