Artists Block

I really enjoy creating papercut images, my noggin contains endless variations of images to reproduce in papercut format, but give me a commission and I'm stumped. I get papercutters block, I'm stumped, stupefied and stilted. There is something about working to brief that I find terribly tough... the pressure, the expectation, knowing that someone else other than me has to like it. Eeek!

I have often thought about being a storybook illustrator but I don't think I would be much chop... unless of course the images came first and then the story!
I have been faced with this dilemma a couple of times this year, having to generate designs for the signal box and just this week to come up with some ideas for a local project of a pop-up shop. I had a play with a couple of designs for their promo and eventually began to loosen up and have fun. I'm crossing fingers they are liked, which is your fave?

X Steph

Tutorial: Welcoming welcome mat

One of our best-selling in-store items is our spray-paint range. We stock Ironlak as well as MTN Australia brands, Ballarat has a rapidly growing street-art and graff scene and it's been wonderful meeting so many talented artists working in our town.
The paint range is high-pigment artists quality paint and comes in a fantastic range of shades in high and low-pressure cans and differing finishes, we also stock a range of caps for different spraying purposes. As well as for street-art painting the paint is fantastic for fun little DIY projects as it covers so well and comes in never-ending shades of awesome colours!
This weekend I fancied up our boring old black welcome mat, to inspire you to explore the magical world of spary-painting I have composed a little tutorial showing you some basic and effective stenciling techniques.

1. I like to keep it simple and use a word-processing program to select a font style and size. 2. Print your letters out and lay over the top a layer of transparent stencil paper. I like to use the acetate transparency paper you use in an over-head projector, it's cheap and it's see-though quality helps with 'registration' (lining up layers) in more complex projects. Also being shiny it doesn't get soggy like paper. 3. Using spray adhesive fix your letters in place, this stops them shifting and helps get a nice crisp line. 4. Always wear a mask when using spay paint, then shake the crap out of your can for way longer than you feel necessary. This mixes the pigment in well and stops you getting clogged cans. I used a 'NY Fat' cap which comes with the Ironlak cans and is designed for filling large areas. Spray on your drop-sheet or scrap of paper to get the can started, this helps eliminate getting yucky spatters or thin paint on your work. Spray an even layer of paint over your mat, it will be fairly absorbent so build up thin layers of paint to avoid runs and drips. 5. When dry, (on a nice day 10-15 mins should do the trick!) peel off your letters (and save for another project?), pop in the doorway and welcome your visitors with style!

DIY - Instagram Print

I'm so excited about the up-coming 'Click @Red Brick' exhibition, I love group shows for their diversity of work and fun opening celebrations. This show combines another passion of mine and that's photography. I snap away at every opportunity and love sharing my images too. We are still accepting entries for this show so hop onto our website for an application form. 

We are embracing all forms of photography, lomo, polaroid, iphonography, you name it... we want it! Recently we acquired two large light-boxes and I have a vision of a whole grid of small un-framed images would look amazing on them.
This reminded me of a fun project I did to pretty up my hallway recently. I received a few questions about them so here is a little tutorial. It's pretty simple and is a great way to display those cute family pics.

I used my Instagram photos for this project, I love the size and scale of Polaroid prints so decided to print my images to this size. Using Adobe Photoshop I made a new image 10 x 15cm (the size of my photo-paper). I regularly back-up my photos from my iphone onto my laptop so I then opened the image file, dragged it onto the blank canvas. Using 'free transform' I adjusted the image to Polaroid dimensions (7 x 7.9 cm).

 

I then printed the image on my ink-jet printer... it's nothing flash but does a pretty good job if I print at high quality. I could trim the paper at this point but I actually like how the image is framed with space to write a caption underneath!

 I am constantly adding to this little grid in my hallway with images of friends, my lovely Mr and reminders of great adventures. I can't wait until it fills the whole space!

X Steph