Back to Birds and Flowers!

I have really enjoyed making and printing the stencils of branches and trees. And I learned a lot!  So, I decided to take what I have learned back to where I started, using the stencils of the flowers.

I enjoyed working with the flower stencils on Yupo but wanted to experiment with darker backgrounds.  I realized that I could use the stencil to print a background using the gel plate.
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I applied paint to the plate and then lifted the paint through the stencil to remove it from the flowers using tissue.  Then I lifted the stencil and printed the ghost on Arches.  I can get it very dark and rich looking. 

​Then I painted the flowers in either watercolour or watercolour pencils and sealed them with gel applied through the stencil.  The result is mounted on cradled panel. Where the gel is applied, the colour is richer and the contrast of the glossy vs matte background is interesting.

​I am getting a fascinating assortment of tissue which I use to lift the paint from the flowers.  Some are very beautiful.  Hopefully I will think of a way to use these down the road. 

It is great to get more mileage out of the flower stencils. These look very different than the ones I created on the white Yupo at the beginning of my journey.

With that success under my belt, I decided to do another bird painting.  I chose two branch stencils which looked good together.  I decided to experiment with the process.  I did my initial rollup of brown paint for the first tree and removed the negative areas with tissue (again adding to my fascinating pile of printed tissue!).  Then I used a smaller roller and applied some yellow green over the stencil in some areas.  Then I removed the stencil, applied the bird mask (to keep that spot clean) and printed it on Arches.  Then I rolled, removed and printed the second branch stencil.  I did 3 prints all together but only liked 1 of them. 
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I finished the robin with watercolour pencil.  Once it was cropped and mounted on cradled panel, I applied soft gel through the second branch stencil to finish it.

​Now, back to the big tree!