If you make a really awesome stencil.
And you make a lot of really awesome stenciled cut outs.
And you clean the stencil off between copies in your book for just such things.
Make sure you don't forget it when you're done, 'cause your stencil will glue itself to the page and getting it out without damage is impossible. š
Over
15 years ago I did a stint of wheatpasting at my university.
Wheatpasting is an interesting thing. Messy and yet unlike spray paint,
removable, albeit with some work. All it takes is some hot water, soap,
scrub brush and some elbow grease to get the images off what theyāve
been glued to. In my youth I primarily pasted up feminist slogans.
Posting up āreal artā wasnāt on my agenda.
Lately
Iāve been wanting to do some wheatpasting. Unlike what I did when I was
20, I want to paste up my art. Iāve been sitting on the idea of this,
where would I post it? Am I too old to wheatpaste stuff? What would
happen if I got caught?
Iām
taking it as a sign that a friend of mine from Bangor, ME posted about
this guy on facebook. I really enjoy his message and that he makes these
cool little drawings and sticks them up for everyone to see. Of course
the alternative is that it is a total pain in the ass to get these
images off their walls and buildings. Some people see his images as
crass (one of his pigeons sits in front of a bottle of bud.) while
others find them cute and still others see the social commentary in
them. I was surprised to see that there were relatively benign and
intelligent philosophical discussions going on in the comments section
of the local Bangor paper, something I must say isnāt common.
Anyway, I find the idea fascinating, but donāt expect me to become a famous street artist anytime soon.
This article is a beautiful one about self censorship. I think that at some point we all lose our way toward our personal voice/vision for our own art. Call it authenticity or whatever, but we have to fight to get back to it. Fight for our unique and personal vision to come through.
In the past all you had to fight was yourself, the expectations of critics and your own inner critic. Now we have the machine of the "art" industry pumping out tools and toys for us to use, straight off the shelf.
For me part of the joy of art was learning to make do with what I had and adapting other tools toward my needs.A little gumption and an idea was all I needed to stoke the creative fire already buring inside.
I've gotten a million questions about how I'm cutting my stencils. First I start with an idea then I decide how I'm going to make that work- do I draw it and then shoot a pic or do I create the image in Make the Cut? It all depends on how I want the resulting stencil to look. If I'm going for a wonky slightly off or not perfect look I generally sketch the idea out in a thick ink pen. Like these:
If I want something that is smooth and mechanical looking I'll create the image completely in the computer from either the idea or an photo. Like this:
Then I've got what I call my focal stencils that I create with a combination of hand work and computer editing. These take a lot of time to create.
The easy answer to how I'm cutting my stencils is that I'm using the pixel trace setting in Make the Cut to create a stencil or diecut and then using my cricut to cut.
Please be aware that I'm using a hacked version of Make the Cut. If you purchase a new version of Make the Cut you will not be able to use it with your cricut. Please see this post for why it will no longer work. Though it could be said that Provocrap is a controlling manipulative spouse and that would tell you all you need to know.
I've gotten flack for being more of an arty art journaler than a writing or cute art journaler. I don't do pretty faces with cutesy quotes. Instead I write my heart out and cover it with paint. I let my writing become part of my finished pieces, even these faces that I've been painting, they have been born out of my art journaling process. Not all of these pieces have deep writing behind the paint, but I learned this process through my art journal.
My art journal is my greatest tool in my art making arsenal. Without it, I'm not sure where my art would be today.
In the images below you can see the words peaking through the layers of paint. Sometimes my journal contains simple lists- like the lists of things I ate during a road trip, a list of purchases made one weekend, beers I tried. Other times it's long paragraphs about influences, things I've read, people I've interacted with, gripes with life. I hang my paint on top of these words, not needing to add a quote or make it pretty. My art journal is a place of no fear. I don't always show it, sometimes it's too raw.
My art journal influences my art and is influenced by my art, it's a never ending circle.
Facebook changed how it's pages interact with the people who like a business page. We were all good doobies and made our business a page instead of conducting business on our personal profiles or just using a personal page for our art. So FB put the screws to the pages. If I want to reach all 402 people who have "liked" my page I need to pay $5 per post, then they guarantee all 400 people on my page will see it, if I don't pay $5 then only about 130 people see it. Additionally if I go ahead and schedule updates they meterout the number of people who see the posts across all the posts per day so the maximum number of people who see the posts totals 130. Pretty god damn sneaky if you ask me.
I won't be eliminating my use of the Comfortable Shoes Studio page but I won't be using it as much and I'll probably use my blog more. Hopefully I'll be writing more over this winter and spring.
Somethign I can't wait to share with everyone is that I have scored a wall at a local cafe to hang my art. It's not a big space, a spot for 10 or so paintings and the ability to have an opening night. So I'll update you all more on that. It's a long way off, August of 2013, but that's good, I'll be able to get a lot of ready for it.
I'vebeen painting a few more faces. These are nearing completion. I need to add a few more details and some stencils to the background but for the most part these are done.
The new blades I ordered for my cricut let me cut through painted papers. I really like how the cuts look.
I ordered a few roland blades for my provocrap Cricut machine. They are sharper and work better than the Cricut blades. I got 10 for $20, free shipping from this guy on the 'bay. No affiliation, just happy to get blades that work and are cheaper than $5 to $10 a blade.
This is letting me make more cuts. I've done a new series of ovals and circles, much like punchinella, or sequin waste. This time I've been smarter and saved them all, so I can cut them as I wish instead of redoing them again and again.
I also picked up a couple of EF Montana paint pens and replacement tips. I've been filling them with liquitex acrylic ink, awesome, awesome stuff. You can see their work in the images below. Full review to come.
In other news, I got braces. They hurt, like a lot. More than I expected. A great thing about them is that I can see results already. I had this one tooth I called the "snaggle tooth," and it's already straighter and closer to my other teeth than it was before. Soon enough no one will be asking me on my YT videos if I'm missing teeth. Which, has to be the worst youtube comment I've ever gotten.
