Virtual Flaneurism

I worked out an art project over the past three days. It involved paint, which is the medium I am least comfortable with, though I balanced my inexperience by using a stencil and some other art tricks I'm more familiar with. I took a handful of pictures throughout the process to give you an idea of how I made the final product, and some of the snags I met along the way.

This part of the project was the easiest: I bought some cheap black paint at Rite Aid and covered an old canvas with it. I was actually very pleased -- the inexpensive paint has absolutely no sheen and created a nicely unobtrusive backdrop for the acrylic paint I'd be using for the foreground.

Using poster board, I made my stencil. It's a D.C. flag, for those who don't know. I actually made a separate stencil of the star so that (1) they'd be the same shape and (2) I could get them the appropriate size without worrying about freehanding it three times.

Then I taped the stencil down with masking tape. Having actually painted with stencils before, I knew that paint would get under the edges unless they were all taped down. This part actually took the longest, as I tried to very carefully tape a thin line along the star's edges.

Then I painted! Acrylic paint. Blending acrylics is something I'm still working on -- and getting the paint think enough that the black background did not show through took a bit more than I'd expected, especially with the yellow.

Peeled off the tape, and voila! Or I wish. Lessons learned: (1) Masking tape, while meant to mask, can and will peel off base paint. Beware; (2) Acrylic paints dries very differently than oil-based or watercolors, and forms something resembling hard plastic. This hard substance will, if painted over tape, sometimes adhere to the tape and not the canvas. So, touch ups were necessary. No worries, though -- the touch ups went pretty well, and I was able to steady my palsied hands to keep the brushes steady.

Anyway, art projects ahoy. Class on Monday, so this may be the last arty farty thing I get to do for a bit.