Hi guys! How’s it going?
In today’s post, I want to demonstrate using stencil images to create something a bit different than what the stencil may originally depict. Creativity is about having fun, and using things in expected ways, so here goes!
As a few of you might remember, I have a slight obsession with reptiles… I really miss having my chameleons. I’m also currently procrastinating pieces for an upcoming paper arts show I’ll be participating in mid-May through June. In an effort to not feel totally unproductive on that front, I decided to add some paper engineering elements too!
Here’s a list of what I used to create this piece:
- Strumpets Stencils Eye See You stencil (6″)
- Liquitex Acrylic Wood Stain (White, Dark English Oak, Light Oak)
- Wood graining tool
- Acrylic ink (both Liquitex, and Daler & Rowney; 3 shades of green, marine blue, interference green, crimson, scarlet, brick red, neutral grey)
- Texture paste
- Gel pen (black, and white)
- Canson watercolor paper
- X-acto knife
- Self-healing cutting mat
- Aluminum armature wire
- Write-cutting needle-nosed pliers
- Archival paper glue
- Elements of Pop-up by Carter & Diaz
I started this piece by creating the background. I painted a mixture of light oak, and white wood stain with a regular brush. Once dry to the touch, I smeared on the dark English oak color with a graining tool (it takes a while to get a hang of the technique, but you basically rock the tool back and forth slowly as you drag it through the paint across the surface). Don’t worry about missing spots or getting it perfect, just go for the overall effect. You can run the tool over the paper several times to get the look you want. I think I must have re-smeared the darker stain over itself about 10 times trying to get a more organic look to the grain.
While the background dried, I pulled up reference photos for both the chameleon (from Google), and the flower (one I had taken). I sketched out a rough outline of the chameleon, then painted it with acrylic Ink. I added details in both black and white gel pen.
I then moved on to the flower. I didn’t bother sketching that out first, but dove right in to painting it with ink. After several layers, I again added detail with gel pen.
I set that aside and moved on to creating the butterfly on a separate page. I used 2 of the designs from the Strumpets Stencils “Eye See You” stencil to make the wings of my butterfly. I put one eye down, then dried the texture paste before adding another portion. I did this until my butterfly had a complete set of wings. I used the black gel pen to draw in a body.
Once that was all completely dry, I cut out the butterfly, and added color (more ink!)
I pulled out my trusty “pop-up bible” (Elements of Pop-up), and found a technique that would work with this piece: pull tab with tracks. The book is made so that it can be pulled apart and examined. I did just that to figure out how to create the pull tab pieces. I cut out the needed pieces, and proceeded to put them all together. I would love to be able to explain how I did this, but it would make this post 3 times as long. See the below picture for the “short, sweet, & accurate” instructions found in the book (seriously though. This took me quite a while, a bit of cursing, and some rethinking… and about a pot-and-a-half of coffee to figure out. I’m sure you could probably do it correctly just by looking at the book, but my brain doesn’t like to do things the easy way ).
Anyway, after cutting, gluing, failing, re-cutting, re-gluing… I finally ended up with a pull tab mechanism that kinda, maybe, sorta resembled the one in the book.
I glued (then taped for good measure, because the little punk kept popping off) the butterfly to the slide piece. If you pull the tab gently, the butterfly flutters over the chameleon on its way to the flower.
At this point, the dogs interrupted, and I got distracted. I was going to call it finished, but I changed my mind about how I want the flower presented; instead of the chameleon simply stalking the butterfly at the flower, I decided to turn the flower stem into the chameleon’s tail holding it in an attempt to lure his lunch… I think this fits the little cham’s personality a bit better.
So there you have it. Thanks for reading, and tell me what you think!
Donita Sharum
Your site is so fantastic. I’m going to come back here again.
Brett Polaco
This site is absolutely fabulous!
Augustina Battles
Keep up the great work guyz.