Florence Turnour's Blog

In Rachel Greig 's Creative Jumpstart lesson, she talked about using gesso as a kind of resist. I tried painting gesso through a stencil onto paper, and then using India inks over the top. Here's the result. Neat effect. Thanks for the inspiration, Rachel!

Day 10 of Creative Jumpstart was a lesson on Gelli printing by Annie O'Brien Gonzales . I'm a big fan of her work, and I have her book, so I had a flip though for additional inspiration before I got going.  I used a new stencil I just designed and my Gelli plate to make this. Some of it is collaged from Gelli prints on deli paper. I just bought some Posca paint pens (I blame Andrew Borloz), and used the yellow to draw on the flower. I was tempted to keep drawing all over it, but I thought the better of it. Thanks for looking!

I love this mask-and-pattern technique so much! Today I did another pattern from Lisa Congdon's Pattern class on Creativebug, following Andrew Borloz 's inspiring lesson from Creative Jumpstart . You know the scene in Bridget Jones' Diary, in which she make blue soup? The pattern of the day is Harlequin, but I got some of my pieces backwards, so... This time, I kept my details a little more under control than on the paisley page . So much fun to do! I either need to use bigger regions, or make some finer detailed stencils. Thanks for gnikool.

You know how common sense says to just follow the recipe the first time, and then alter it after you know what's going to happen? I could have probably stood to do that. Instead, since the pattern of the day from Lisa Congdon's Patterns class is paisley, I thought I'd combine that with Andrew Borloz 's Hodge Podge Soup recipe in Creative Jumpstart . Well, my version of the recipe has quite the mix of spices! I'm going to do one with bigger-than-a-paisley patches of color, so that the patterns in the stencil will show up better (my paisleys were only a bit courser than my stenciled patterns). Still, the stencils made for excellent guides to make semi-symmetric doodles. When in doubt, more dots! Thanks for looking!

I love stencils, so I kept experimenting with the Take Away technique that Michelle Ward showed in Creative Jumpstart . This is going to be my background for Day 6's project (I seem to have skipped a day. I'm not sure what happened, but I plan to go back to it later, although Day 6 looked like it is going to be SO MUCH FUN that I may only do that for the rest of my time off). I painted paisley (tear drop-isn) shapes in gesso, and then brayer-ed on some red and magenta paint, and used my new stripy stencil to remove the paint. I used this stencil I made from hand-drawn lines. Here's my background in full (with a little of my chevron pattern from Lisa Congdon's Patterns class on the side). Thanks for looking!

I made this background using techniques from Michelle Ward 's workshop in Creative Jumpstart . Love her stencil designs and her technique. I used two stencils I made a long time ago. They are a set because they use the same shapes in different configurations. I tried it with dark paint over light background, and with light paint over dark background. The dark paint on top produced a clearer image. Thanks for looking!

These goats are on 5x5 birch board. I painted the background using home made stencils, and then drew and collaged the goats.

I'm taking an on-line class from Jane LaFazio called Watercolor Sketchbook: Designs from Life . The first week was about flowers and creating a completed page. I started my drawings at El Dorado Nature Center for my first page. Here is the finished page, with designs added. I made some stencil designs from the yerba mansa shape, and made some gelli prints with them. I cut the shapes out of watercolor paper as well. I think I'm going to stitch it on as a flap to the page with the yerbamansa. I drew hibiscus flowers from my back yard for the second page. I also painted some day lilies, but I haven't finished the page yet. The second week's assignment was to draw vegetables. We were also encouraged to make rubber stamps from some of our patterning, but I haven't done that yet. The second week is all about vegetables. I chose radishes. There's even a horse radish. Thanks for looking!

I printed on my Gelli Plate some greeting cards the other day, and it took me quite a few tries to figure out how to get coverage all the way to the edge without getting the back and inside of the card dirty. Here's how I did it. Step 1. Ink the plate. In this picture, I only inked about three quarters of the 8"x10" plate because I was making 5"x7" cards. I placed a stencil (black) onto the paint (pink). Step 2.  Cover the part of the plate that you don't want to print. For me this included the part without paint on it. I used a sheet of deli paper. Step 3.  Fold the card, and place the card on the deli paper, back side down, so only a small part of the back of the card sticks over onto the paint. This will allow the print to wrap around to the back of the card slightly.  In the picture, I zoomed in on the top corner of the card, so you can see the slight overlap onto the paint. The front of the card is face up in the photo. Step 4.  Unfold the c...

Today I donned the face mask and took to the garage to spray paint some papers for collage. I used the same stencils I've been using on the Gelli Plate, which I cut on my electronic Silhouette cutter. I still need to learn how to strategize to get patterns where I want them with the spray paint, but I managed to get some prints that I like. I also did some experiments with one of my face stencils. I didn't have a goal when I designed the face stencils. I'm hoping to come up with a collage idea in which it makes sense to use them. Thanks for looking!

In the workshop  Creative Jumpstart  that I am doing, yesterday's lesson involved acrylic spray paint.    Michelle Ward  demonstrated spray painting through stencils using layers and masks.  I tried it with spray ink, which was fun, too, but it was much more interesting to work with the opaque spray paints.  I wanted to do it outside, so I had to wait for a break in the rain. It came this afternoon, and I took over the garage floor. I spent some of the rainy days cutting new pattern stencils on my Sihlouette Cutter. I draw them in Adobe Illustrator and then use a plugin to cut them. The pattern in the images above is my favorite.  I also painted my hands, just a bit.   About the colors, Michaels had an odd selection of their paints on sale. I bought 7 colors, but they were not the ones I'd have chosen if I had not been trying to be frugal. For example, here's a series in lemon and tomato. Here's a close-up of th...

In the workshop Creative Jumpstart that I am doing, yesterday's lesson involved acrylic spray paint, which is (no I'm not kidding) an art supply that I didn't own (yes, I got some). The video by Michelle Ward made it look like so much fun, I thought a little spray paint could be fun to own.  It was actually on sale at Michaels; I think they are downsizing since only the weird colors were on sale. I got a few but I haven't used them yet, since, in an odd turn of events, it is raining making my well ventilated (back yard) work area soggy. In the meantime, I decided to try the activity with Dylusions sprays.  I cut fish stencils out of printer paper and then sprayed them with a waterproof sealant (since I was pretty sure I'd be drowning them in ink).  Some of my prints worked well, without much leakage under the stencil, but I like the bright colors you get by soaking the paper so I chose this one, which was not an excellent print. After writing on it with Permap...

I made some new stencils to Gelli Print though. On this one, I drew on the print with black and white pen. I like the tree stencil, but I'm enjoying using the cut-out portion of it as a mask more. And last, here are some birds. I know many people use their Gelli Plate prints for collage, so this isn't revolutionary, but after printing with my stencils for a while, I notice that the masks look like they'd make great collage elements. Does anyone cut and then print on the little bits? Or does everyone print and then cut? I make my stencils from overhead projector slides. These are the masks Thanks for looking!