Stencil of a building; experimenting with different colours

---Medium: acrylic, screen printing frame, roller and baby powder

My aim today is to experiment with screen printing instead of painting in-between the gaps in the stencil.

For my first experiment, I used the colour red, blue and white. The paint was added on top of the screen printing frame whilst I put the stencil under it. After this, the roller was used to press the paint unto the stencil through the screen. I then removed the stencil off the screen, because it was sticking unto it, and placed the stencil unto the page. This was unsuccessful as you could not see any outlines of the actual building but only parts of the building were actually visible. Even though this experiment was unsuccessful, I liked the abstract created with these colours. The piece looked calming and different to my other pieces because of the technique and colour. It was interesting as it looked like a piece that was missing a lot of its pieces to create the full image. I still prefer the idea of seeing the skyline around the building so I decided to continue with this experiment and made sure it came out successfully. After repeatedly trying this same experiment and failing at it, I finally tried a different method by putting the paper at the bottom of the screen print and rolling the roller unto the stencil. I then turned the stencil around and used the roller again. When doing this method, I was able to come out with an excellent result. This time the outline of the building and the positive space was visible.

First I tried using red and blue, and then started mixing colours together. This was inspired by Michael Tompsett as all his skyline abstracts are combined with expressive colours. When removing the stencil from the paper, I noticed that some of the paper from the stencil stuck unto the page and left some patches of paper. However, I thought this was really effective as the small pieces of paper looked like little clouds; this therefore allows the stencil to still be connected with the theme skyline.-  Not only does it look like a sky, but it also makes my print have a rusty texture which looked intriguing. Yet again I continued with this experiment and tried the same method but using only red acrylic. After repeatedly using the same method, I finally had the perfect result of a red building. The marks from the roller that was visible made the stencil look interesting. The marks really were interesting to me because it looked like an ocean and a landscape at the same time when looking closer at the painting. I think just using red acrylic made the print look plain as if something is lacking. For my next experiment, in order to make this look less plain, I will change the colours of acrylic that I used. I chose to use the colours blue, red and green- as primary colours it would stand out. I really thought this was visually stimulating because of how I laid out the colours instead of combining them together. When removing the stencil it left some little gaps making it looked like I used spray paint to get this print. I still continued with this technique but instead this time combined the primary colours to make a secondary colour. This made the painting look colourful, less plain and mostly expressive; however there was a lot of dark blue making the print look dull to me. This was a little successful to me because although the colours were mixed to create a secondary colour you could still see the components of the primary colours, which captures your attention to the blue instead of the secondary colours. I endeavoured to reduce the amount of blue that stood out so in order to do this, I decided to use the same stencil and print it onto another page whithout adding more paint to it. This time the result was different than the other prints because you could now see less of the building which was compelling because it is something you can relate to personally as the building is a memory fading away from your mind. I thought this was also successful as it is different from the other experiments and the painting felt looked wild for example; you could see patches of paper, different colours in different places, little spaces in the abstract left blank and also again the fact that it looked like I used a spray can. All this made this print look exotic and busy which was what I was going for in my first experiment.

Process

 

 

Looking through all my experiments, you are able to see how I improved when doing the print and expressing different colours. I think this work is also similar to the artist Michael Tompsett because of the expressive colours and how I was able to introduce different colours to create an atmosphere or a feeling through some of my experiments. Even though the artist style looked similar to mine it was still different as I was focusing on positive space instead of negative space as I think the buildings also play an important part in creating the skyline. I think the difference between the positive space and the artists’ negative space in comparison was quite interesting to see. In my opinion, I prefer my idea of showing a positive space but at the same time I think Michael’s negative space is better for portraying whole buildings of or in New York, while mine is more about a specific or singular building. When doing this experiment it made me realise that everyone goes through the phase where they try to remember something or something that has happened yesterday but is not as clear- this was shown through the artist’s techniques. At the same time, I realised that when I try remembering buildings you cannot see the patterns or the clear structure of the buildings but the outline or skyline in your mind. Furthermore, this shows the importance of skylines, which could be an outline of something you may not remember but can only remember vaguely. For my next experiment, I am going to do the same thing but instead use the outline of the stencil focusing on the negative space of the building.