I've been using heavy cardstock for my stencils for the last few years. Previous to that I would cut my stencils from thick pulpy paper that reminded me of super thick construction paper. The cricut does great work with cardstock, I've not looked into plastic, I like the way cardstock stencils handle.

I start out with a clip art image. I pull that into GIMP remove  a lot of the detail and adjust the light and dark. I then print the image and thicken lines with a marker. I also add bridges, so that every area that needs to be connected to another is. The last thing I want is an island that shoudl have been connected not connected. This process takes quite a bit of time. After I'm done with the manipulation of the image it looks nothing like the original I shoot a pic and adjust the light and darks so that it's a crisp black and white line art image.

That image gets cropped to size and then pulled into MtC's pixel trace setting. I manipulate it in pixel trace a little bit and then import the image.

Here are a few process shots:

Above you see the scanned in image, below the actual stencil. This stencil needs a little work, some of the areas are too small to be effective and will quickly clog with the thick paint I'm using. I'll probably import the image again and see if I can thicken those.

I've been wanting a good brain stencil for awhile now. Back in the late 90's I made a series of large sized internal organ stencils, all handcut and all bassed on old school medical illustration, but highly modified.Over time and moves they were lost to the shuffle and I miss them.

For this project I printed off a mid sized medical illustration of a brain. I highly adapted it by whiting out areas and thickening areas and creating bridges so it would work as a stencil. That took the most amount of time. I then used my new ScanBox to snap a perfect clear picture of it, uploaded that to my computer and then pulled it into Makes the Cut's  pixel trace setting. A few clicks and whirs here and there and in a few minutes I had a background brain and an internal detail stencil cut. There are a few areas where I would probably simplify it a little bit if I had more time but as is I like it a lot.

You'll probablly see a few more internal organ illustrations show up.

I've been using my cricut by Provocrap to cut more stencils, Makes the Cut still kickin' it. I just ordered myself some fresh Roland blades to further hack my cricut.

I wanted to add some alphabet stencils to my work, so I cut stencils form the stencil font. I started out with letters and numbers but pretty soon I was looking up words in binary and cutting those out. One of my favorite songs has a word sung in binary in it. So I cut that lyric out in several sizes. Of my new stencils, it's my favorite. I'll be looking into cutting out more words in binary.

These are backgrounds, nothing exotic going on here, just loads of stencils, over stencils and scraped paint to create loads of texture. I need to transfer this technique more to loose sheets of paper. Totally digging it. Totally digging the capability of hiding messages in the work, in plain site, while not hiding them.

I finished the last of the Chipin images ands now I need to wait for the thank you cards to be delivered and I can finally get everything out.

Sometimes it's good to get back to your art journaling roots. This past week I grabbed a cheapo journal out of the bin and started at it. I'd written some rants and ravings on the first dozen or so pages and I wanted to draw on them, so I had at the journal with acrylic paint.

I started out with pages that had been written on in waterbased ink. I scraped a layer of paint over that, allowed it to dry, then added another color.

On some of these pages I doodled. Others I wrote.

After i got past the written on pages I collaged on pages from a telephone book. Once the gel medium was dry I tore the edges and pulle dup the bubbled areas. Then scraped more paint over those.

On many pages I stenciled.

The final layer is a smooth thin final coat of titanium white. Super thin, the colors and ink still showing through.

After all that I will draw and write on the pages with sharpie and a variety of ink pens. I might add more layers of paint, or stencils.

I've chosen stencils with shapes I cut and designed that have meaning to me. Mostly they are simple designs, gears show up.

Life happens and then stuff takes longer. This was the first weekend in a long time I was able to concentrate on the chipin camapign from the time I left work on friday until I went to bed on Sunday. It was pretty great to spend a full weekend doing art and art related things. I was in the zone.

An interesting observation of the Chipin Campaign is that my life seemed to do anythign it could to derail me. Couldn't get the weekend off that I wanted, then I was sick, then death. Its interesting how life seems to fight the good and then when you are ready for it, it comes at you in waves.

Anyway, I wanted to show some of the process of the art. Before I get to the good paper with my fine point pens I do some studiesw and practice pieces. These are quick studies done with whatever I have at hand on whatever sketchbook I have around. This weekend I was working in a Piccadily journal that I'd written in and then scraped ink across its pages. Honestly I'm loving the look of that as a background and many use it in the future for more art. So much texture, and it's definately back to my art journaling roots.

So before I even touch those fine point pens, I do a bunch of warm upsketches, larger than the final piece and usually in Sharpie or some other marker. I work fast and loose, moving my hand quickly from one side of the page to the pother, mapping out the lines and features of the face.

After I map out the darks I add in the lights, sometimes with white paint pen more often with white china marker.

Only after I've done a bunch of these do I move onto finer point pens and good paper.

Sometimes the best thing is to grab a few pencils and a sketchbook, and simply draw.

If you've been reading this blog for any time You know I love to read Robert Genn's twice weekly writings. He and his daughter are both artists. Right now they are taking a helicopter trip to the peaks of a mountain and painting with a group. He writes about the excess of inspiration they find at the peak of a mountain and how you can search for better compositional elements where ever you find yourself.

I agree.

What inspires you?

I was speaking with a friend of mine about how certain things get my creative mojo going, like a walk to the cafe, a nice cuppa something hot and coffee flavored, and then a wander around the city.

Parked on Cabot Street during the Sketch Up I realized that the urban landscape inspires me as much as the natural. I need to train myself away from literal details. For instance, the Brown's of Beverly building has six windows on the left side not 3. I felt 3 worked better with my image than 6. 6 would have made that side too busy.

I love the Brown's building. In the AM it's lit up gold from the rising sun and as the sun sets the opposite side glows in the sun. It's a great building.

I hope to get a decent painting done of some of the buildings around me that give me inspiration. Maybe that will be my next chip in campaign.