Experiments in Watercolor: Background Stencils

 Part of what I was looking forward to this summer was having time to go back to my daily painting practice.

After designing projects and teaching these to the kids all year I have little time for my own work, not to mention the housework, the daily walk I'd love to take, extra homework with my own kids, etc, etc.


....enough complaining already....


I have been wanting to try this for a while so today was the day.

I was at the Dollar Store and I picked all these letter and number stencils.  Some are hard plastic some are mylar (thin like a transparency).

I thought they would be great as paint stencils for doing mixed media collage (don't worry that post will show up soon).

For a buck I decided to pick up quite a few, some I left full size and others I cut down for doing small areas.

For background papers I would normally use acrylic but I wanted to do some watercolor practice today so I thought I would experiment.

Using different stencils I painted a background on watercolor paper.  The paint was just tube wc that I had left in my palette to dry.

I did this randomly.

Let dry.

I found it too overwhelming.  I wanted to minimize it a bit,  push it back into the background so using a plain water wash I painted over it and let it blur.




Let dry.

I then did my pencil sketch on top...

....and then did my painting adding a little ink and extra pencil where needed.

People who visit my house are always searching for new paintings of mine.....so I decided to have a frame on display where I would switch out those daily paintings.








Have a good weekend and check back Monday for a new book giveaway and project.

One way to mask

I thought I try to do a tutorial today. Here goes nothing.

Near the end of the school year, one of the Grade 5 teachers asked me to do a lesson on surrealism, specifically to have the kids paint their own copy of Rene Magritte"s Golconde. Well I fussed awhile over how I was going to do this.

They needed to mask several duplicate shapes. That way they could do a light airy background with watercolor washes and then do more detailed work in the masked areas with colored pencils, markers, etc.

Masking fluid for 28 kids was just not practical given the amount of area needing to be reserved. Asking them to preserve their whites with their brush skills in multiple areas identical in shape was also not going to fly, I could see the tears already.

Tape seemed the only practical approach but we couldn't use exacto blades to cut our shapes. Normally you place tape down on your area, sketch out your shape and then using a blade cut away the excess without harming your paper.

So I came up with this masking tape sticker idea. It works so well I use it now for all my paintings where I need a large masked area or where I require a very clean line.


































You need painter's masking tape, it can be green or blue(green is cheaper). Take a piece of wax paper and lay several pieces of tape on the wax paper. DO NOT PRESS FIRMLY DOWN, light touch only or else you'll have a tough time removing your custom made sticker.

















With pencil draw the shape you require to mask off. If your shape is larger than the width of the tape just overlap 2 or more pieces. I outlined these with marker so you can see them.

Then you cut out the image with scissors including the wax paper backing. If you want multiplies of the same image you can use it as a template and trace around it.

When you are ready to use your sticker remove the wax paper backing...

and stick onto your paper or canvas. Now you can press FIRMLY and make sure you get all the edges.

Paint over your sticker while you lay down your background washes.

Let your background dry completely...you have to resist the urge to peel off your sticker too early. Once fully dry carefully pull off your sticker to reveal your pristine white area.

Now you can add color to your image to finish your painting. The masking sticker gives you a nice clean edge around your image to play with instead of trying to paint in your background after the fact.

And here is the finished painting which also qualifies for my daily practice for today!!

5x7 140lb wc paper