This week had a lot going on, but in short: I had to restart. Twice. But I've been quickly back on my feet and getting into it again with more ideas then ever.
I started out by realizing all the work I was drawing onto the plastic, wasn't on the plastic. There's a thin protective film on both sides I was drawing on, which began to peel off along with my work. It then curled up into a giant mess and I threw it into the garbage. Plastic 1, Me 0. (Really blurry photo because, to put it bluntly, I was mildly pissed off)
However, starting from scratch I decided to make a few genius decisions. 1) I was gonna start using that trace paper I got to make things easier, and 2) I was gonna start using the transparency of the plastic to my advantage. I printed out some photos I've been using for reference, traced out rough image of the police officer I wanted to use for my stencil, edited it a bit to be more in line with my style and less directly from the photo, and went to work. I taped the plastic to a piece of poster board underneath which I used to put my drawings under and trace them onto the plastic. This sped things up quite a bit!
But before I moved on too far, I wanted to test cutting it out. I sort of had a bad feeling as I was working more and more with the plastic, and sure enough, I was right. The plastic was too thick and difficult to cut in the minor details I was hoping for. It was very difficult for the xacto knife to get a good cut into it, and when it did it kinda "slipped" creating much larger cuts then intended. This is probably something I could remedy with a lot of practice, but seeing as I'm one week of not much work down on this project, and that I had another project I haven't really been properly working on, I decided to go with my backup plan. Plastic - 2, Me - 0.
I bought a laminated paper calendar from the Dollar Store a while back, intending to use it for a stencil, and it works really well. It's a billion times faster to cut, easier to get in detail, and because of the lamination I think this one will be more paint resistant then my previous ones. Plastic - 2, Me - 1.
I quickly went to work, gridding out my drawing of the police officer, and toying around with my new medium of choice.
I'm pretty happy with what I have so far, but I'm definitely still hashing things out. I also had a completely new idea from the Presidential Debate bouncing around my head...
Can only pick one though since I drew it on the back of the police officer. I'll choose after I work a bit more on the semester-long project since, to be honest, I haven't even planned that one more then two weeks in haha.
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