I’ve been making stencils from leaves this weekend. As it’s the middle of winter there aren’t many leaves about. Walking past the tree in the garden into the house I noticed that the ivy had started growing up the trunk and that some of the leaves were quite large:
I chose one large leaf and one smaller one to make my stencils. I drew around the leaf onto thick paper and cut them out using a craft knife on a piece of glass.
The stencil and the cut-out were used to make both positive and negative images of the leaves with pastels. My first attempts were a bit messy but the second set weren’t too bad. I had trouble getting enough pastel on the edges of the stencils to get really intense colour onto the paper. I got enough stuck to my fingers but it didn’t really want to stay on the paper.
Having got the hang of it with pastels on paper I went on to stenciling fabric with oil sticks. The stencils were cut out of freezer paper and first ironed onto the fabric. This gave a nice clean sharp edge to the images. Using the oil sticks on fabric gave more intensive colour. I mixed some of the colours too by crayoning one colour over the other before brushing the paint onto the fabric. I’m using Sennelier Oil Sticks as they were cheaper to buy locally from Boesner than to order Markal Paint Sticks on the internet.
Here are the results:
For this leaf I used a copper metallic paint stick too, but you can’t really see the metallic effect on the fabric.
Using stencils and oil sticks has definite possibilities, especially as pale colours can be used over darker fabric and be seen!
