Nothing is safe when the spray paint comes out of the closet

An oldish plastic table and 2 chairs sit on my studio balcony, giving me a window on my backyard world, but the table was double ugly with a worn white laminate top  and I want beauty around me, so I got the bright idea to paint it. I taped the edges, got out my larger stencils and set to work.

I gessoed the table top first and after that was dry I stenciled some geometric designs with black paint. Then I added green fern leaves, some blue letters here and there, and finished with red and yellow flowers, and sealed it all with several coats of spray polyurethane.

I like it! Do you? And the best thing is I don't have to live with the same design forever... I can re-do it any time with layers of gesso and spray paint.
Thanks to Mary Ann Moss and her Stencilry class last year.

Conversations with Nature

These two paintings are the result of a workshop I took yesterday from Rebecca Wild, a local artist who often teaches for the Sitka Center near Lincoln City.  We cut simple stencils from contact paper and applied multiple layers of color and text on paper to create these small works. They're each about 5 x 7 inches.

This one with the 12 circles was done by cutting masking tape into nickel sized circles and sticking them in a pattern on tip of the painted paper. Then I worked back into the paper with powdered graphite and pastel, removed the tape and wrote a poem inside the circles about summer rain on the coast.

Stencilry

I'm enrolled in an online class called Pure Experimentation where the curriculum is all about stenciling using spray paint, spray ink, brushes and sponges to create visual journal pages. I already use alphabet stencils to create my Sermon Notes series but this will add another dimension to those and other works of art.

The class was designed by Mary Ann Moss, Dispatch from LA, and is excellent, with PDF lessons complete with photos and dozens of short videos in which MA demonstrates her skills with her favorite art tools. Many everyday items can be used as stencils: lace, plastic doilies and placemats, nursery flats, sequin waste (love those holes). And now we're transforming clip art and photos into stencils using the computer, exacto knives, and stencil burners. Over the last week I've set up 2 different spray booths: one is set up in the garage and is made from an upside down card table, an old sheet, and a trash can. (This is what I use on rainy days.) and the other is a simple setup on my studio balcony where I draped a canvas drop cloth over the table and pinned the outer edges to the railing so I don't inadvertently paint the side of the house.