why i'm doing happy dances + a little stencil demo

I have some super exciting news to share with all of you! I'm writing an ART SAVES piece for Crescendoh! And it will be featured the week of August 30! I can't tell you how much I LOVE reading Crescendoh and am so honored to be part of such an lovely project!

All of this good news has made me in the mood to create! And since I 've been getting a lot of questions and comments from people about painting technique, I thought I'd document my process for this new painting and show you how I go about painting with stencils. 

I have to say, after documenting this, I realize just how all over the place my process feels and how it all really just comes back to having an intent to express something I feel. I'm not just painting a character, I'm painting a feeling. And my hope is that somehow that comes across. It sure feels lost as I start, but that's the beauty of it. Slowly, piece by piece, it all comes together.  

For this piece I used a doily as my stencil. I started with a light blue background over the entire wood block. 

 Then I laid the doily over the wood and sprayed it with blue and then white paint. I've been reading a lot of fashion magazines and seeing tons of gorgeous tie-dye, so that's my inspiration for the look here.

I felt like the colors were a bit too bright and contrast-ie, and I wanted more of a water color effect, so I grabbed some watered down, white acrylic paint and blended it over some of the colors. Then I added a few more blue stenciled-in spots to up the contrast in other areas.

 I really liked the way this patterned origami paper worked with the tie-dye effect, so I used it for her dress and as a scalloped edge (like you'd find on a stage in a theater) along the top. I also painted in her head with acrylics, then blended in a complimentary color pastel on top for added softness.

 I found this phrase in a vintage book "fresh from the ocean" and just had to use it here. I have no idea how it will fit with the finished piece, but I know to follow my instincts with that sort of thing. 

I also filled in her skirt with acrylics and added the lines by globbing paint on  the end of my paint tube and pressing and smudging it.

 Here's how she sits in my studio now. I rubbed brown ink over her skirt to add depth and had to outline her in that pale green to get a better idea of who she is.

And see that giant white blob beside her left eye? I wanted you to see that because I think sometimes it can get frustrating creating and messing up things, especially when they seem perfect. Here I just happened to have too much white ink in my pen and it completely spread. That's when I stopped for the day. But usually those mess ups turn into happy accidents.

For some reason she needed those giant elk horns too. They're budding with cherry blossoms. And I am very excited to see just who this girl blooms into.

BLOG UPDATE:

Here's what this girl turned into! Check out the entire evolution here!