Last week I did some final tidying up of the ink drawing and began to cut out the stencil itself (quick recap since I didn't post last week).
This week, I wasn't quite satisfied with the face of the stencil so I spent a lot of time getting a likeness of Trump that was accurate to how he looked, yet exaggerated. The previous face was accurate enough, but lacked impact, leaving the piece neither bombastic nor subtle. Here's what I ended up settling on:
I feel quite satisfied with this face especially compared to the original, but it was quite time consuming so that's what I spent the first day or so doing, along with finishing the rest of the cutout.
Next, I cut out the letters, did a test spray of the stencil, decided on what to do for the audience, and began thinking about what exactly I want to spray this on top of.
For the audience, I plan on making a second, smaller stencil of the cop drawing I did earlier, but with some modifications to suit the scene. It shouldn't take me longer than a day. That will allow me to produce it quicker since the deadline is coming up, and it feels right to use.
Next, the test spray came out better than I expected, I thought a lot of the linework would be lost from the edges getting fuzzy, but its surprisingly sharp (in person at least, the photo doesn't do it justice). However, I think I will be using a paint roller for the final product so that every edge is sharp and precise. I'll need to pick one up during this week. PS: Test spray is flipped because I have drawings on the front I may use and didn't want to cover them.
Lastly, I'm still not quite sure I want to spray this on top of. I have a lovely piece of acetate I think this would look great on, but I also like the idea of using newspaper. I might end up doing both, like a layer of acetate with the spray on it and newspaper glued to the back. I'll still have to think it out a bit more, but my mind is churning it in the meanwhile.
Busy week, but I'm feeling good about where I am!
As for the home project, I've thought it out and decided that I wanted to make a larger scale stencil, something life sized. One of the issues I'm currently facing with this stencil is that it's not something that would be clearly visible from 30 feet away. And the size in general is a constraint that I can't deal with without making new stencils. Lastly, the fine details like the ones in Trump's face are extremely hard to cut at such a small scale. Blowing it up 2x to 3x would make details like that much easier and clearer.
I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do for the subject, but I decided that wasn't really what mattered in the piece and quickly settled on reusing a photo from Art 3 but scaled up. I'm quite fond of the photo and I find reusing it in new and interesting ways is a fun challenge.
I used a free online software called Rasterbator to blow up and flip the image so I could have a larger scale version to work with. The Rastorated version is quite pixelated though, so I'll need to do some touch ups when transforming it into a stencil. I'm still working on what I'll use to make the stencil since it's such a large size, but I'm thinking about it.
Lastly, if I have time, I want to make this one a dual layer stencil, one white, one black, to capture all the details. Multi-layering stencils seems like the way to go for more detailed, elaborate works, so I will need some practice in that moving forward. It's about 4x as big as my Trump stencil, so I'm looking forward to working on it more. I'll definitely need to put in some serious work into it though, since these projects are supposed to be semester long projects and I've hopped on quite late.
A quick recap/TL;DR for everyone:
- Studio project - Almost done, making a smaller stencil for audience and deciding what to spray/roll it on
- Home project - Planning done, need to begin executing. Already scaled up, but needs to refine drawing and figure out what I will be drawing on at this size (36"x48").