3D Experimenting with My New TREES Stencil

Here you can see my just-released 9" x 12" stencil -- designed to celebrate the glory of creation!  Picture yourself in a forest or park, looking up into the sky, where branches and leaves meet in a canopy of flickering lights.

Looking Up Through Trees

Today, curtains draw open on a photo-sequence showing my adventure in 3-dimensional art with this stencil.

Below, you can see this stencil's already stained green from earlier adventures.  With masking tape, I've secured it to a red background -- a sheet of Yupo that had been previously printed with older stencils.  Across the top, I've used an art spatula to generously deposit a line of heavy gloss gel medium.  Above that line is a partial view of the advertising sheet of plastic that I'll use as a spreading tool.

Below:  With that plastic spreader, I've smoothed a layer of gel downward across the stencil and its pre-painted background Yupo.  

Above, you can see what resulted when I lifted off the stencil. Because I've used gel medium, it appears as a near-white layer, but after drying, it will be transparent because I used gloss gel.  I could have used matte gel, which contains a small amount of ground marble to dim its sheen.  Matte gel also moves toward transparency as it dries, but it never becomes as clear as gloss gel. 

In the upper right corner you can now see the earlier imprint that I'd made using M & Y, one of my 4" x 4" mini-stencils.  That imprint will disappear as I move forward in my art experiment, so I'm just ignoring it.  But for the time being, it's visible in the two close-ups below.  The close-ups show details in the gel once it's dried.  It's clear, so the way to show it is to let it reflect light.

Next, below, you can see my black Sumi ink and a sponge brush.

Above: I've started to spread the ink generously across the 3-dimensional gel, now that the gel has thoroughly dried.

 Below are two close-ups showing the way the black ink pools in textured areas --

Below:  With a rag, I've started to rub ink from some of the higher-level areas.  Altho it appears as if I've already added metallic gold, I haven't yet.  The pale gold area is reflection of light.

Now, I've decided to shift from ink to water-soluble solids.  First, I've rubbed watercolor pencils over the raised areas of the 3-dimensional surface....

Second, I've switched to Caran d'ache watercolor crayon:

Above:  My next step has been to spread a pale metallic gold across the raised areas, using a Shiva stick, as shown both above and below --  

Above, I have started to rub off some of the excess from the waxy Shiva stick.

Below is a close-up shot of the project as it has reached this stage of development.

I haven't finished this project yet, since the full-view shot doesn't please me as much as the detailed area above.  

I may let this piece rest while I move on to other art adventures.  Later when I come back to it with "new eyes," I'll continue my experiments.

Thanks for visiting here today!

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