Fly away fairy

Using an image I'd sketched in the research section I drew a detailed pencil drawing of a fairy.

Fairy pencil drawing

Which I then traced using layout paper to use as a stencil for spray painting. This involved the painstaking job of sitting there cutting out tiny sections of paper with a utility knife that I'd got from my dad as I don't have a craft knife. The stencil was very fragile and delicate, so I only did a couple of sprays. The first was with a combination of black and white paint on a grey-ish background to create silver tones and the second was with black spray paint on a white background.

Stencil

Sprayed stencil on white background

Before removing the stencil

Voilaaa!

Banksy

This is a post I planned to do around the time I was doing the spray paints of the birds and the cars, but never quite got round to it, so just imagine it was posted then!

Banksy’s street art is probably some of the world’s most well known work, although at the same time no one really knows exactly who he is or much about him at all. His work is generally satirically humorous, but also conveys a message or meaning – often a political or social one. Recurring subjects in his work include rats, apes, policeman, soldiers, children and the elderly. Ever since first seeing Banksy’s work I’ve had an interest in it and the more I research it and the more images I find online of his the more I want to know. A few years back I painted a copy of one of Banksy’s pieces of work and then did my own painting inspired by it, but I have always wanted to explore his work further and to also do some spray painting of my own.

Originally Banksy would do his spray painting free hand but then went on to realise it would be much quicker to use stencils and would lessen his chances of getting caught. The spray painting work I have done is also all with stencils, but this is mainly because for my first time spray painting it wouldn’t be a good idea to try and do it free hand. A lot of his work just uses the colours black and white with the incorporation of just one other brighter colour, such as red, meaning I have used a similar colour palette to him.  I am impressed by the way in which he successfully manages to create such detailed and realistic artwork using just black and white and this is something I have tried to do in my own spray paintings. By focusing on the darker shades in my car drawing and using them to create a stencil, I feel as though I have managed to create a car spray painting in a similar to style to Banksy’s, although obviously not to the same standard. I originally planned to spray paint both areas of black and white and I think this would be a way to improve my spray painting and could be something to explore in the next stages of this project. As well as this I could try and find a way or incorporating a small amount of red into this image to make it more related to Banksy’s work. My stencils were made by cutting sections out of a page from my sketchbook and Banksy’s are most likely done with acetate and cut out by a computer so I think if I had the same resources I would be able to create a sharper spray paint.

One of the prominent themes throughout Banksy’s work is that of the environment and global warming. Coincidentally, my two spray paintings both relate to that: the car in the sense that it is creating the pollution and a large part of the page is taken up by the engine fumes from the car which are air pollution, and the birds because they would be affected by air pollution and global warming and they are part of nature. 

Below I've included some of Banksy's work that I particularly like.

Car Drawing and Spray Paintings

I furthered my research into air by going on to draw a car as it was one of my original research images and I felt the fumes and emissions it creates relate it to air. I drew the car on textured wallpaper, using charcoal, to give it a more rugged feel. In the area of the car I overlaid tracing paper with a fineliner drawing to give the shapes and tones more definition.

Using this drawing as a guide I went on to create a stencil to use to further my experimentation with spray painting. This was much more difficult and time consuming than I anticipated, due to all the different shapes and tonal variation. I just picked out the areas of darkness and planned to use black spray paint and then in the development section make a stencil to show the areas of light which I would spray with white spray paint.

Stencil laid out (don't know how to rotate)

Car spray paint

First Ventures into Spray Painting

Following on from my previous post, I wanted to continue to incorporate the bird silhouette into my work, but wanted to explore it in an innovative and exploratory media, so seeing as I had never used spray paints they seemed apt. Furthermore, the fact that they are aerosols and therefore work my using air to release the paint, relates them to the element of air and my theme of the elements.

Using the bubblewrap from the previous activity, I printed the last bit of paint onto a blank page in my sketchbook in order to use the same shaped silhouette from printing as in my spray painting. To test the stencils I firstly used diluted paint and an old paint brush to flick it onto the page - I think this gives a similar effect to either blow paints (which I had originally planned to use) or messy spray painting.

Before removing the stencil

Result

The Stencil

Using some spray paint I had at home already I did a spray painting using the stencil next. The paint had nearly finished, but I think this gives the end result an interesting air like quality, in the way that the colour is slightly faded. 

Before removing the stencil

Result

The stencil

I really like how the stencil looks here before it is removed and after I have spray painted it as I think the black splatters on it from the previous piece of work give it more definition and make it art in its own right. My favourite of these 3 is how the stencil looks afterwards once it had been laid out on a white background as the red paint is very fine and air-like and the black splatters outline the birds well.

The last activity I did using this silhouette was a large A2 spray painting where I used new spray paints in colours of red, black and white and covered the page in birds. It turned out a bit messier than I would have liked, possibly because it was the first time I had spray painted properly and also possibly something to do with the fact that it was windy when I was doing it. I did each bird in red and black and then gave them all a shadow using the white and black spray paint.  I also used the stencil to create some prints, and again as art in its own right.

Bird Spray Painting

Bird Stencil (don't know how to rotate)

Stencil Used to Print