On a trip downtown on the subway recently, I was drawing in my sketchbook. My young neighbor Lila (age 5) was sitting next to me with her mother. Lila was drawing too. She asked me what I was drawing, and as I didn’t exactly have a name for what they were, on the spur on the moment, said “Flower Planets.” I showed her, and she studied them gravely, without comment. We went back to our respective drawing. Before my stop, I closed my book to say goodbye, and she showed me what she had been working on: Flower Planets of her own. They were beautiful! I wish I had had the foresight to have taken a picture of them.
The idea of Flower Planets was the beginning of these four stencil “drawings.” With my husband, Daniel Levy’s help, I have put the process photos in an order in four videos, so you can see how I used the StencilGirl® stencils and how the four drawings evolved. They are on Rives BFK paper, 22 x 30. For all of them, I began by cutting a large mylar circle mask. I held the paper in place with a tiny bit of blue painter’s tape and kept the mask in place the same way, by anchoring it with two pieces of tape at the corners. I sprayed through the stencils using a Preval Sprayer, and Golden fluid acrylic Carbon Black thinned with water at a 1:1 ratio.
You will see in the videos that I have put pointed tips on the 4 ounce bottles of Golden’s Fluid Acrylics. Handily, the tips from Clairol Color Applicators (available at beauty supply stores) fit perfectly on the tops of this size of the Golden’s acrylics, allowing me to use the bottles as a squeeze bottle drawing tool.
The stencils are available from StencilGirl®, with the exception of a useful scrap of lace, and a spiral-y stencil I made for painting a dress for a Broadway show years ago.
Dragonfly Planet
Materials:
Rives BFK, 22 x 30
.004 mil Mylar circle
Compass
Lace scrap
Golden Fluid Acrylics Titanium
White and Carbon Black
Preval Sprayer
Prismacolor pencils
Flower Planet
Materials:
Rives BFK, 22 x 30
.004 mil Mylar circle
Compass
Lace scrap
Golden Fluid Acrylics Titanium
White and Carbon Black
Clairol Color Applicator (available
at beauty supply stores)
Preval Sprayer
Prismacolor pencils
Scarab Planet:
Materials:
Rives BFK, 22 x 30
.004 mil Mylar circle
Compass
Lace scrap
Golden Fluid Acrylics Titanium
White and Carbon Black
Preval Sprayer
Prismacolor pencils
Spring Planet:
Materials:
Rives BFK, 22 x 30
.004 mil Mylar circle
Compass
Lace scrap
Golden Fluid Acrylics Carbon Black
Preval Sprayer
Watercolor tray and brush
www.margaretpeot.com
