Stencils and Masks

I've been playing around with sun printing using stencils and masks. There's nothing like the organic shapes of real plants and flowers...but I think stencil prints in my stash will come in handy.

This was an experiment with an underexposed leaf print that I didn't like. I recoated the print with the solution...and covered it with a leafy stencil....I think it was a good save.

Here's what it looked like before.

This is the stencil I used....and at this point it was fully processed. 

The stencil had been used many times for gelli printing...so was covered in acrylic paint completely blocking out the sun.

And this is before and after rinsing. Pretty cool don't you think...and a good way to salvage a not so good print.

I had a daisy stencil that had never been used....so there was no acrylic paint to block out the sun. I expected blue flowers with a white bookpage background...but some sun got through the translucence of the stencil background creating a lighter blue. I think it's pretty. 

The daisies seemed to be calling for some gold centers. This paper will show up somewhere.

  

This was a cloudy day experiment a couple days ago...and I happened to photograph the process. This is the stencil sitting on the prepared paper just after I set it in the sun. I hadn't used the stencil for painting...so some light got through the background so I knew it would be a lighter blue.

Here it is after just a minute or so in the sun.

After just another minute I laid the masks that came as part of the set on top of the piece a little off center.  One of the mask stems was covered in white paint from gelli printing....so light wasn't going to be able to pass through it....the other one had never been used.

Here it is all baked...and you can see where the darkest places are going to be. Because it was cloudy....it took longer and might have been sitting in the sun for about 1/2 an hour total.

Before and after the rinsing. You never know what you're going to get....it's always a surprise and that is what's so fascinating about this process.

You can see the difference in the opaqueness of the two stems. The variety is kind of interesting and I like the layered look.

  

I cut it into four pieces...

and have been painting and doodling on a few of the pieces....just for fun.