Project # 13 Phillip Taaffe and Layered Stencils

Phillip Taaffe is an American artist who creates large patterned paintings. Many of Taaffe's paintings are  hand-painted with silkscreened elements.  The photo above with Phillip Taaffe on the ladder illustrates how large some of the paintings are. There is some interesting information about Taaffe on the Drawing at Duke Blog written by Duke University students.

 

You can make a painting inspired by Taaffe's work using either stencils or silkscreens.  This project focuses on the use of stencils.  If you would like to use silkscreens EZ Screen  is a great product to make small silkscreens with using transparencies, sun and water.  No equipment needed. 

You can buy stencils or make your own stencils using heavy paper and scissors or an exacto knife.  You can also use parts of commercial packaging that have nice shapes. Below are a grouping of stencils made out of packaging parts and some hand cut stencils.  

For our project we started with an assortment of handmade stencils and repurposed heavy papers and tagboards from product packaging.  This a great project for all ages and skill levels from advanced preschool students to professional artists.  It can be done with watercolor, goauche or acrylic or a combination of paints.  I have used acrylics to get a nice separation between the layers and more opaque colors.  You may want your layers to be transparent.  Try experimenting with opaque and transparent colors.

The first step is to paint a base layer.  It can be a flat color or it might have marks and splatters on it.  Add a layer of stencils by either pouncing, spraying or splattering paint.  You may decide to partially paint over some of the stencils or add splatters or marks to this layer or you may be ready to add a second layer of stencils.  We found that 2-3 layers of stencils worked well. Have fun and experiment until you feel like your painting has a nice balance and does not need anything else.

Below is a student example made by a 6 year old.  It is loose and works beautifully.  

This is my demo example.