Artempowerment: Carol’s Humble Art Journaling 101: DIY Stencils

This is something I dreamed up a few months ago. I have not seen anyone else do it or talk about doing it.

Materials Needed:

Plastic tab sheet (clear ones work better than solid colors)

Woodburning set

A magazine face, or one you have drawn

A piece wood or glass that will keep you from burning into your table or desktop.

Gouache

Pens

or Mod Podge

We are going to make our own stencil so that you no longer have to go buy expensive stencils. It is simple to do.

HINT: choose an easy portrait and you are only going to trace main shapes, not extras.

Of course, I chose a face that I had drawn for another experiment I will share later on this month.

Place the clear tab sheet over top of what it is you are going to draw. Trace it on the plastic sheet with a black permanent marker.

Tape the plastic sheet over top the face you are going to draw (or any other shape).

(The bump on her head is a mistake, btw)

HINT: Make sure you have a safe surface to burn on. I am using a lapboard and a piece of glass.

Remove the under-paper that was your drawing or magazine piece. You can either tape or hold the plastic sheet as you draw on it with a woodburning tool.

Before you start burning, you need to look and decide what to burn in the plastic leaving holes. I will do this slowly and take photos as I go so you get an idea of how to leave space as you do not want to cut it totally out of the tab sheet. For instance, when doing the eyes, leave some of the eyeball, the iris and the pupil so you do not just have ghost-eyes. The same for the lips.

HINT: When tracing the outside lines, make sure to not burn it all out. Leave some spaces so that the end stencil does not fall out of the tab sheet.

When you are ready to burn...go slowly. Especially when you do eyes and mouth.

I am starting the shape of her face by burning a few staccato lines to give enough shape that you can fill in later when drawing through the stencil.

Keep checking how you have pressed with your burning tool. Check to see that you have burned all the way through the sheet. You need it to be thick enough that you can draw through the lines you are burning.

After doing the outside in broken lines, and done the neck and hinted at the shoulders, you move to the eyes.

Remember that you do not want it all burned out… unless you are proficient at drawing in later.

Lift the plastic tab sheet up to a light and check that you have enough HINTED shapes.

Put your stencil over a page in your art journal. Use a pen to trace the stencil on to your art journal page.

HINT: This is the true test as to whether you have burned deeply enough. If it is not a good stencil, turn your woodburning tool on and go over it again.

What you have now is a face shape for any time you want to do a straight on face portrait of any kind. The eyes are in the right place, the nose, the lips, the eyes, the neck… and so now we work on a portrait before I do any real teaching how to. This is such a simple way to learn, in that just turning loose and trying it this way, you have a foundation understanding of just where facial features go.

Turn to your journal page and trace your stencil.

Now use a black pen, or whatever writing tool and fill in what was not in your stencil.

Let’s do a quick finish of this sketch and you can paint it or color it however you choose.

Let’s add hair because hair tells a great deal about the personality.do not put hair higher than the crown of the portrait.

Hint: Do a few examples on a few pages to make sure you get the gist of it. Change it up with the hair being different on each one and they begin to take own their own characteristics different from the last one. Adding other details help change up the original as well.

We can now paint the portraits. The first one, I am going to paint with gouache because I love the intense colors I can get. I am not going to paint the face in the usual portrait colors. This one is going to be pops of bright colors from dark to light and there will be no coloring between the lines.

As I begin, I intuitively choose colors that I can blend without getting a gray ir mud. I simply get swatches of color down. As I paint, I go from merely swishing on color, to adding layers and layers until I have some semblance of a light source (left side of page) and the shadow area on the right side of the page.

I let this dry really well.

HINT: Gouache lasts in your palette and can dry up and be reactivated with water.

In order to have the gouache stay put and not reactivate on the page, I seal it with some Walmart Krylon Matte Sealer. (You have to spray the sealer on outside. It makes your page smell a bit for a time so best to let it dry well out in a sheltered place).