Stencils have been used for thousands of years to make images. In the cave painting above from 10,000 years ago in Argentina, the image maker was nearly always using his or her left hand as a stencil. As we look at this image, we begin to imagine a right handed human, spraying paint from a mouth full of pigment and saliva. This direct contact memory of hands on rock enables us to conjoin in our minds with early humans as they engaged in the image making of themselves. These are images of touch, of direct physical engagement with the rock surface, and it reminds us of how fleeting is the life of human beings and of how long in comparison is the life of a rock. It reminded me of those dinosaur footprint fossils, especially those of running tracks; preserved moments that are still as they were millions of years later.
Fossilised dinosaur footprints
Today however we tend to associate stencilling with street art, Bansky seeming to have cornered the stencil market, at least in relation to a popular awareness, but stencilling is a way of working that has a long and interesting history, so its well worth investing time in exploring its potential and not being put off, simply because one artist seems to have made the technique his own.
Victorian stencil decoration
If you go to Harrogate spa baths for a traditional sauna and dip in the cold plunge pool, which many of us that live in Yorkshire used to do before COVID struck, you can as you recline after your sauna experience, gaze up at walls and ceilings covered in traditional Victorian stencil decoration. These decorations reflect the importance of the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain at the time,
From a 1910 stencil catalog by Sherwin Williams
Both Charles RennieMacintosh and William Morris used stencils, a technique which continued to be an important approach to surface decoration on through the 1920s and 30s in both Britain and Europe, in particular because the low tech approach was something most tradespeople could use when decorating both public buildings and a private house. However stencils weren't just for wall decoration.
André Marty
George Valmier Pochoir technique
George Valmier Pochoir
André Marty and George Valmier were French artists that both used what was at the time called the 'Pochoir' technique, a stencilling technique that was very popular in Paris during the time of Art Deco. (1920s/30s) It was stencilling (sometimes combined with collotype) used as a very basic printing technique, but it has often been forgotten that it can produce very sophisticated results, both for making abstract and for figurative imagery.
Here's a how to do it video.
Monoprint with stencils
The history of printmaking is very closely linked to the use of stencils, especially in combination techniques such as woodblock with stencils.
15th century playing cards printed from a woodblock with a stencil used for the red colour
It is in Japan that we will find some of the most sophisticated uses of stencil techniques. Katazome is a stencil method used to make patterned fabrics. You apply a resist, usually made from a rice flour mixture, through stencils. Then the cloth is dyed and where the paste mixture covers and permeates the cloth, the dye will not penetrate.
Kimono detail cloth printed using Katazome as a stencil method
This process is essentially a silk-screen printing technique. The first known use of a screen printing technique was by the Polynesians, who would force ink through holes cut into banana leaves to make prints. However in Japan the process was developed into a very sophisticated art form. Katagami was an extension of the art of making paper stencils for dying textiles. The stencils were made by several sheets of washi paper being bonded with glue extracted from the persimmon fruit. This made for a strong, flexible, brown-coloured sheet, which could be finely cut out into patterns. These delicate pieces were then stabilised on a screen built from a fine silk mesh. Large swaths of fabric could then be printed by repeated moving of the screen and lining up the edges of the repeat pattern.
Since that time of course silkscreen printing has become a standard printing process and stencils can be photographic as well as hand cut or painted. The University has a very good print facility which is well worth spending time with and getting to know several stencil techniques, not just screen printing. It was Andy Warhol that made silkscreen prints so familiar to us, but it's worth remembering that a lot of artist's screenprints look nothing like Warhol's and that it is a technique always ripe for re-invention.
Jonathan Lawes: Screenprint
If you want to make your own stencils, the stencil material can be made from paper, mylar, thin plastic, or metal. However, if you do use Mylar sheets to make them, you will probably need a hot pen stencil cutter. The advantage in working with a stencil cutter is that you don't get those tiny nicks caused by craft knives when trying to cut sharp changes in direction.
A hot pen stencil cutter
Using a roller to apply the paint.
The paint has to be of the correct consistency, not too thin or it will drip and run, but liquid enough to be rolled or dabbed evenly through the stencil holes.
Stencil Brushes
Like every painterly craft stencilling has its own special brushes that come in different sizes. If you are using letter and number stencils in particular, you will find that it is so much easier to use stencil brushes than ordinary ones, because the long bristles of paint brushes push paint out under the edges of the stencils. However neatness isn't everything and Jasper Johns has worked with stencils of numbers and letters since the 1950s, using his orderly grids of stencilled forms to visually engage and play off against gestural brush strokes. In his case the paint sliding over and across stencil edges is part and parcel of the effect he is looking for.
Jasper Johns: Alphabet 1959
Jasper Johns: Numbers 1960
Christian Guémy (C215)
Bansky is not the only street artist to use stencils and Christian Guémy (C215) has been using them to make expressive close-up portraits of marginalised people for over twenty years.
You might be thinking why am I bothering to spend time posting information about such a basic technique. Well besides the fact that most techniques are when you boil them down pretty basic, it's a reminder that so much of what we do comes out of an investigation of material possibility that has always been with us. In this case the making of a stencil and the application of a pigment. We sometimes need to dance with materials, to hold them close and move them around, so that between us we can find out the potential that can emerge from humans and bits of materials rubbing together for a few hours. The module first years are undertaking at the moment is centred on research, but people can get stuck in too much background reading or internet searches. Sometimes the research can be simply, what can I do with this material or this way of working?
Spray diffuser
The first time I remember using stencils to make images was back on my pre-diploma course, but I used a spray diffuser to apply the paint with, which I see are still available for only £1.95. We used them mainly to spray our charcoal drawings with fixative in those days and I have noticed that a very cheap low tech option now being used is to buy children's felt tip pens with a spray attachment. Back then I was very interested in Pop Art, and I used spray techniques to make paintings based on the images you found on seed packets. I'm sure I would have played around with felt tip pens and these children's spray attachments, if they had been available then.
Felt tip pen inserted into a simple hand pumped spray attachment
Avery Singer's paintings use masking tape and paper stencils and the paint is applied using spray. The spraying is done using spray pens or airbrushes rather than being spat out through the mouth. But the technique is basically exactly the same. She uses 'SketchUp' on her computer in order to work out her images, the very basic building blocks the software uses, being ideal for inventing scenes that have nice clean mainly straight edges, that can be transferred into stencil cut designs.
A 'SketchUp' idea being developed
Applying the paint through masking tape stencils
Avery Singer
If stuck play with some materials, go back to being a child in the sandpit and see what happens when you dig or push or scrape. It is only afterwards that you begin to find a story for what you have done and as you find that story it often goes into directions you never intended it to go into, but that's the great thing about open ended play, you don't know where you will find yourself, but that's exciting and if you are prepared to take the risk, it can be exhilarating.
A couple of years ago the artist David Faithfull and fellow members of Edinburgh Printmakers set out to make a sustainable print out on the sands of the North Sea shore. Using a stencils made out of plastic bottles and a black ink mixture made up from squid ink and Scottish seaweed, they made one image using the black squid ink to mirror an oil slick and another image using stencils of the hundreds of plastic bottles found on the beach.
David Faithfull
The only materials used were those found on the beach, both natural and man made materials were regarded as possibilities, and then the tide came in a washed it all away. Sometimes you need to make things that only last for moments, but they can still mean something.
No comments:
Post a Comment