18 June 2015

Stenciling with Watercolors

When I took a workshop with Karen Kunc almost a year ago at Anderson Ranch, one of the things I experimented with was using stencils with Akua and oil-based litho inks. I tucked that experience away in the back of my mind for future use, and this week the future arrived. I decided that instead of carving text, as I've done many times in the past, I would try stenciling it. And I decided to try using the same waterborne pigments that I use for the rest of my woodblock printing to print the stencils.

Given that so much water is involved in using these pigments, I chose to make my stencils out of acetate rather than cardstock or other paper. I used an X-acto knife to do the cutting. Here are the stencils after use:


And here are some closeups of areas of the print where I put the stencils.



I'm not saying that I'll never carve text again, but this method sure was faster!

3 comments:

Jennifer Martindale said...

Thank you for this. Great idea

Andrew Stone said...

The only problem I can forsee is if you have to wet mount the finished print the daubed watercolor might run? If this is Gekko, then the paper should not need to be flattened or mounted.

Annie B said...

The paint isn't thickly applied, so I'm not sure if it would run or not. Yes, it's Gekko so I won't be mounting it.