Layer Cake

This was my first attempt at making my own multi layered stencil. It didn't turn out too badly (but has its faults) considering I cut the image layers by eye as I did not have the luxury of owning a copy of photoshop at the time.

I ripped the original image from the net. It was a caricature of a pretty lady. I thought it could work well as a stencil and would be good practice. It has no deep meaning or message behind it. Just a visual. The original image size was tiny which made it harder to cut as the pixels were huge once I'd blown it up to a nice proportional A4. I found the actual picture of the woman later and she turned out to be not as tasty as first thought. I've seen this sort of re occurrence in the more recent stuff I've done. A beautiful looking woman doesn't always transcend into a beautiful looking stencil. And vice versa. So it's trial and error but I've learned to spot what works best, to a point. And what imagines will look bad due to lighting/contrast.

Having no place to actually paint I had little option left other than to start doing these in my lunch hour at work or not do them at all. This itself can pose a few logistical problems. The first being time or the lack of it to be precise. And the second is people. Being curious animals by nature, everyone wants to have a look at what you are doing. (This eats into your very limited time). Once people have attributed this stencil work to you, they know where it originated if they pass by it on the street. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees that this is a good thing to be doing with your spare time! The police especially.

But anyway, I love doing this and it's all about developing your skills and getting better right? And if they happen to be pasted up in the odd doorway around town. So be it. You have to go with what brings you happiness and fulfilment. Well, this does it for me.