Yeah, I had to tape more paper to it again.

Then I worked on this one in the heavyweight, which still feels pretty solid but is significantly easier to work in.  I’ve got a still-lighter weight stack of plastic, and I will try that next to see if it’s still solid enough to be truly re-usable.

This is just as I started to sand it.  I’m pretty sure the dust that results from sanding plastic is not good for me, so I have been wearing a mask, and trying to get outside when possible. The weather has been cold still but relatively mild, I can bundle up and sit outside for ten minutes before I start shivering. Since quitting smoking I no longer have the supernatural power against the cold.

Yep, my foot.

So okay, I thought I’d do some reusable stencils.  I’ve got a friend into stenciling things all over places.  He will remain unnamed but his enthusiasm for an xacto blade and some pizza boxes was contagious, and it sounded deliciously non-digital.  I decided my first one could be half a pig head like from this painting, googled some how-tos, and then went out to buy some plastic.

When I was sketching I ran out of paper, I didn’t really plan it out super well but in this case anyway I didn’t have to – the sketch got completely eaten in the process.  Masking tape to the rescue.

Crunch, crunch.

The finished stencil

I’m thinking next time I’ll pull the protective cover off before I carve it out, it will be easier to be precise.  I also need to change my blade more often, they get dull really fast on this plastic. A bigger cutting mat would be handy, mine is only 6″ on the longest side.

This was hard on my fingers but a lot of fun. I think I’ll be making more.  I tested it out with a marker to see if anything needed to be smoothed out, this is the result.

Piggy

I drew this ON MY NEW IPAD. EEEE!

I have been a little M.I.A. lately, I have been possessed to do some writing.

The book’s got information about facial expressions an the muscles that dictate them, and I’m at the part with the brow and how the frontalis muscles are like venetian blinds on the skull that pull the brow back and wrinkle the forehead.

As a note I love high shiny foreheads and side parts.  The mobile picture that I did yesterday (I didn’t post it here but through my instagram account) was also from lessons in the book, that one dealing with how movements of the eyebrow effect the folds of the eyelid.

If you have an instagram account look me up.  I’ve been doing digital painting on my ipod and uploading it to there.  It’s extremely satisfying, even with the tiny tiny screen, to be able to draw right onto the medium.  It feels closer to the work than my tablet does, and the results are surprising me.

The universe has been kind enough to send a little birdie telling me that an ipad is on the way to me, so that I will be able to do my sketching on a larger screen!