Art Journaling with StencilGirl® Stencils

The more I’m working on interpreting Ben Okri’s poem in my art journal, the more I like the fact that individual lines can stand by themselves and you don’t need to know the entire poem to be impressed by the meaning of the various lines. This month we have reached the following words: Do magic things that the future, surprised, will find. They really made me think about what our legacy will be once we’re gone.

If you want to follow along with the entire poem and see the previous tutorials you can find them by putting my name into the Search box of this blog. You can find it in the side bar.

Here is my interpretation and the full tutorial about how these pages came to be. Once again I’m working on loose pages that, once finished, will be put back into the ring-bound large art journal by ArtbyMarlene.

1.      Using Celtic Spirals Mask and a variety of colors of acrylic paint (I used Dina Wakley Ruby, Lime, Ocean, Magenta, Lemon and Sky), stencil on the pages using a cosmetic wedge.

2.      Spray the pages using Perfect Pearl Mists (I used Sunflower Sparkle) through Drips stencil.

3.      Let white and turquoise acrylic ink drip down the pages.

4.      Using a gel plate big enough for your pages, add black acrylic paint over the entire surface of the plate using a brayer. Put Looking Up Through the Trees on top of the black paint. Now take a print on one of your pages, making sure to press well to get a good clear print. This is easier the thinner your paper is but can be done on even quite thick paper as long as you put in enough time to both brayer and rub the back of your paper to make sure it picks up the black paint from all the nooks and crannies. After taking this print leave the stencil in position and take several more prints on spare paper to remove all the black paint showing through the stencil.  Use a baby wipe if necessary to remove the last of the black paint showing. Remove the stencil. On the plate is now only the black paint left that produces a mirror image. Take a print of that on the other page, again putting in a lot of effort to get as perfect a print as you can manage.

5.      Outline the black with a sparkly blue gel pen.

6.      Edge the pages with black/white washi tape.

7.      Write the lines from the Ben Okri quote on the black areas as the bottom of the pages with a permanent white marker as shown.

8.      Glue on female figure to the right hand pages as shown (mine is from a collage sheet by Alpha Stamps, and the bird (from a collage sheet by ArtChix) to the left hand page. Outline with a black Stabilo All pencil. I recolored the dress of the female figure with a red Pitt pen to match the colors in the background.

9.      Using any StencilGirl® stencil you have, that features circles (there are loads!), add gold circles in the trees with a gold iridescent paint writer (mine is by Tulip). The stencil I used was the medium one from the May 2018 StencilClub stencil. Outline the circles with a permanent black marker. 

© Frieda Oxenham 2020. To see more of Frieda's work, please visit her BLOG.