A Peek Inside Pam Carriker's Art Journal!

Hey Everyone, 

Pam Carriker here to share a little StencilGirl love with you all! For my guest blog post I thought it would be fun to share a peek from my art journals and painted papers that will hopefully inspire and maybe give you some ideas of ways to use stencils as both a focal point and background elements.

Above are a sampling of backgrounds made using stencils. Most have been pulled from a gel plate or use bits of collage elements from painted papers. One thing I’ve learned about creating backgrounds is that I like them better when I keep to one or two stencils and a simple color palette. You can always add more color but it’s a bit harder to recover from a ‘hot mess’ if you make one. lol. But the great thing about stencils is that they can help calm a hot mess too! Just by adding some white through a stencil you can create some calm to a piece that’s going in too many directions.

Using stencils for imagery or a focal point is a great way to give voice to a journal page. I love to start with a stencil image and then draw and paint on top of it to make it more my own. Face stencils are a great way to practice painting, shading and face details without having to draw a face every time you journal. Every time you do it they turn out a bit different. You can also layer stencils on top of one another to create new imagery. In this way you begin to tell a story without using words. For me the words come later, I let the artwork flow and the ‘story’ shows up on the page.

This last grid shows some of the ways I’ve been using my latest line of Halo stencils. I really love how the simple imagery can stand alone or give importance to a face. I created these Halo designs to also work with my small face/mask stencil, making it very easy to create a face if you want to. I’m also loving using them with metallic paints! I just paint an area large enough for the stencil in metallic over a painted background, then lay the Halo stencil on top and using a baby wipe, wipe off the excess paint. It gives an ‘Old World’ feeling to the stenciled image that I love. 

I hope you find a little inspiration from this peek inside my art journal and have a wonderfully creative day!

xo,
Pam

Pam Carriker
Artist, Author, Columnist and Instructor
Art at the Speed of Life
pamcarriker.com