Happy Friday my people!  I do hope you are all well and happy and warm (it’s ‘fuck off’ cold here AGAIN … I’m just about done with this whole winter thing).  

A few weeks ago the concept of stencils popped into my head.  These things, I just forget that they exist and I’ve never really used them in my paintings.  They, the stencils, live outside my day to day reality – or did, until I stumbled across some online and dropped a whole $12 for a pack of 12″x12″ patterned stencils.  I decided to give it a go.

I decided to go simple, an easy gradient background and just one pattern covering the canvas, just to get the practice and the feel of it.  To complicate things a wee bit, I didn’t let the background dry.  I really did want the blending of the background and foreground colors a little bit as I went.  (Mostly, though, I didn’t let it dry because I was impatient to just get on with the stenciling, but the blending result was a boon).

I chose this scalloped stencil and a lovely blue of some sort … I didn’t keep track.  I could get up and to the studio to figure out the name but my feet are up and my coffee is good.  It’s lovely, not phthalo, the other one I like … sigh.  PRUSSIAN … I got up to check.  

Mind you, this is messy.  I didn’t wear gloves because I’m a fool and the stencil kept shifting about and when I moved it to set the next section I ended up with a pretty well unclean and organic look to the patterning …. I assumed it was a failure, until I backed away to see the finished product.

Y’ALL!  There’s a really nice cubist thing going on where I added more paint at the start of each stencil square, the blending is wonderful and the fact that I didn’t anticipate any of this is even better.  I do love to fly by the seat of my pants with these things.

I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with this piece next.  It’s hanging in my dining room now and while I do enjoy it solo, I also feel like it could benefit from some focal point.

As a side note, I did periodically ‘clean’ the stencil as I worked.  By cleaning I mean that I lay it on another canvas and just used a paper towel to wipe it off… which left me with stencil residue.  So I started this piece with that background and used a different stencil to just just a small smudgy area in the top corner.  I feel like the stencils have a place in the studio, I’m just not entirely sure how I will use them.

It’s all about the new things!