Frieda Oxenham: Poetry with StencilGirl® Stencils

A New Year brings fresh hope and new beginnings in many ways, specially this year. Hopefully we will be able to look back and realize that life became more normal in 2021 after the disaster that was 2020. As always I am using Ben Okri’s poem as my guideline and once again it was just what I needed to hear: “We are not much more than what we think, in our minds we swim or sink”.  Let’s all try to keep on Swimming!

Here is the tutorial for my spread:

1.      Mix gesso with blue Radiant Gel, and apply to 2 facing pages of a large art journal. I use the ArtbyMarlene one)using a sponge.

2.      Using stencil Leaf Zen Landscape and a variety of blue paints with a cosmetic wedge and apply to the bottom half of both pages.

3.      Take an 8 x 10” gel plate, add and brayer out a variety of acrylic paints (I used 6 different colours) and take prints on plain copy paper.

4.      Again using the gel plate, brayer on some darker colours, put stencil Looping Leafy Vines on top of the plate and take prints on the paper made in step 3.

5.      Repeat step 4 but using white acrylic paint.

6.      On the sheets from step 4 and 5 stencil the fish from Boho Fish using black acrylic paint. Use both side of the stencil to get a variety of fish swimming in different directions.

7.      Cut out the fish and glue onto the pages with soft gel medium.

8.      With various green acrylic paints, stencil on patterns of greenery to the bottom part of the pages using stencil Looping Leafy Vines, with a cosmetic wedge. Outline with a sparkling green gel pen.

9.      Stencil on the sun as shown, using orange acrylic paint, a cosmetic wedge and the small stencil from the February 2017 StencilClub.

10.  Make the words of the quotation using a Dymo writer with self-adhesive tape black on clear, and adhere to the pages as shown. Cover with clear gesso to take the shine away somewhat.

11.  Stamp on shell images to the bottom of the pages. I used small Tapestry Stamps.

12.  Stencil on the words Keep on Swimming from Boho Fish to the left hand page with blue paint. Outline with a permanent black marker.

13.  Outline the fish eyes with a permanent white marker

14.  Spray on the sky part of the pages through Tropical Floral with blue mica spray to make clouds.

15.  Edge the pages with a blue inkpad.

© Frieda Oxenham 2021. To see more of Frieda's work, please visit her BLOG.