Today sharing with you a wonderful creative experience I had the other day: Stencil Art! Had so much fun getting creative together the other day with a new friend from the neighborhood, Jantina Verburg. We connected through Instagram as i liked her work and discovered she lives nearby and does workshops as well. And finally I got to meet her in person and getting introduced to painting with stencils!
Getting Ideas
I was greeted with a warm friendly welcome by Jantina who resides in a spacious farm neighborhood with her partner. She has her own workspace and has been doing all kinds of painting for decades. Lately, she has gotten into stenciling and was more than keen to show me the ropes. I have indeed some experience with stenciling but only with craft ink stamps and a small sponge. A few attempts were done with acrylic paint but they always ended up bleeding from the edge of the holes. Enter mini foam rollers and paint trays! The sort you get at hardware shops, but on a smaller scale! Now why didn’t I think of that?
Learning New Stuff
A sheet of thick aquarelle paper was used for this, although any good quality art paper would work fine. With a wide range of colors to choose from, we begin by rolling the paint directly on the paper as background color. I chose two shades of pink and yellow for instance. Once dry, we begin by stencilling! Just simply apply the paint with the foam roller where desired. Then for the smaller areas, a cheap makeup sponge is a great tool. Tip is not to smudge the sponge across (which was the mistake I was making before) but gently tapping it on the area. For every turn that the paint needed drying, I worked on another piece. Hence this is my second masterpiece:
Out of My Comfort Zone
Another takeaway from this session was that I discovered how introducing dark colors on a bright-colored painting can add some vavavoom. Some Payne’s Grey on three corners or distant areas around the painting gives some accent to the whole picture and balances the composition. I was firstly reluctant to use such a dark color but after daring to try it, I see what Jantina meant. Another tip she advised was incorporating some flowing patterns like white bubbles where blocks of colors break to make the painting flow with continuity. Mixing colors with white further makes the paint more opaque and hence pop out more too. And here are my two paintings I’ve done that day. Very pleased with it!
What a fun and inspiring session that was! Learning new things and experimenting with the unknown are why I enjoy working with other artists too. With these two stencil pieces, I plan to add a bit more to it with some acrylic markers, although I am still trying to figure out where and how. Best to leave it for now, though, and start practicing this method to create new stuff. Always a pleasure to make new friends and share creative ideas with each other. Jantina is holding a workshop in mid April on Gelli printing, something I would also like to learn more about. Looking forward to that! Thank you so much, Jantina, for your inspiration.
Click here for more about Janina and her amazing artwork on Instagram
My Kawaii Quarter 