Spring is rapidly turning into Summer here in Arizona. Everything is in bloom and the birds, butterflies, and bees are frolicing in spite of the growing heat. Yesterday I received the May set of stencils created by artist Terri Stegmiller from the StencilGirl’s stencil club. They are perfect for Spring and Summer cards, mixed media pieces, art journal pages….just about anything. I was so excited, I wanted to stop everything and play with them!
I didn’t have much time before dinner, so I used only the 6″ flower and bee stencil. Looking around for something to create with, I noticed I had a piece of copy paper sitting on my desktop that I had used to clean off my paint brayer with. It was already covered with old orange and blue acrylic paint and a few blobs of other colors but, since I wasn’t trying for perfection with this piece, it was perfect. I outline-stenciled flowers on top of the old paint using a black Sakura gelly roll pen (which will write over almost anything). I did the same with the bees. I ‘painted’ the coneflowers and the bees with Pitt big brush artist pens, letting the old paint shine up through the new India ink giving it some dimension and depth. I knew I wanted a little more yellow in the flower petals so I used a yellow Sharpie paint pen to add lemony opacity to the flowers. I used a white correction pen to add dots to the brown stamens. I added the ‘Bzzzzz’ from the stencil between the bees using a black Pitt big brush pen then used a white gelly roll pen to add dots to the letters to make them pop. Finally, I outlined the paint blobs at the top of the page which looked like butterflies to me. Voila! A garden to play in!
I will add this to my ‘play around’ art journal.
