Stencilling

At the end of February I took an on-line stencilling course (via Zoom) with the lovely, talented Dutch artist, Pauline Greuell. (It was so neat to be in class with a teacher in The Netherlands and other students from Scotland, NYC and Costa Rica!) Pauline's work is beautiful and she is very generous with knowledge and encouragement. During the workshop, I cut a very simple leaf stencil out of mylar and used it to print these leaves. I used the same stencil and the same paint, but Pauline showed us how to apply the paint and use the brush in different ways to create all these variations:

Then we used what we learned to make a random pattern:

It was a really great way to spend an afternoon!

A couple of weeks later I made a two-part stencil to create a flower with a small centre:

The other day I finally got around to making something out of my stencilled fabric:

I'm hoping to continue to learn about and explore more stencilling!

Enjoy your day,

Judy Ann

More Printmaking

 I've been dabbling in printmaking ever since I wrote my first craft book for kids, Prints. Recently I bought this beautiful new book by Elise Young called, Block Print For Beginners. She carves gorgeous images and shares clear instructions, as well as tips and tricks, for helping us become printmakers, too. Inspired by Elise, I'm taking time to experiment.

I carved this image in soft rubber:

I used a stamp pad to ink the image, then pressed it on paper to print it. 

I used a new pencil eraser pressed onto a yellow stamp pad

 to add the flower centres:

I got brave and used block printing ink to get a bolder, more permanent image:

I thought it might look nice to use orangey-red paint for the centres:

Then I tried printing on dark paper. It's quite a different look, not quite as appealing.

I hope to keep on playing!

I hope you have playtime, too.

Judy Ann