Into the Black

So, I am burrowing down my rabbit hole, making interesting and intricate stencils of flowers and painting them on Yupo.  Then I created a stencil of white daisies – and suddenly I realized that I would need a dark background to really set these off.  I tried to paint a dark background on Yupo but I wasn’t happy with the results and I am thinking what I really needed was black.

I took a piece of Yupo and applied black gesso on it with a sponge roller. I have done this before. It creates a nice matte black background.  My first thought was to work with pastels on top of it.  And then to put gel through the stencil to protect the pastel.  It worked but wasn’t quite what I wanted for the daisies.

​Then I took a piece of black gesso’ed Yupo and applied absorbent ground through the stencil. (Absorbent ground, also known as watercolour ground is a white, opaque goop in a jar.  It is made by Golden and Daniel Smith.) That got the white back and created a surface I could use watercolour on.  I painted the daisies with watercolour and then applied gel through the stencil to seal it and create a nice gloss on the flowers set against the matte black background. It came out beautifully!

​This has been a very satisfying branch of the rabbit hole and has brought excitement back into my art practice.  But now it is time to change things up!  I am wondering how my stencils would work in combination with my Gelli plate.  And I want to introduce birds into this exploration!  Stay tuned…