Drawing on the Muse

I wanted to create a series of images that I could have some fun with, experimenting with mono printing and stencilling. I find that the best way to approach this kind of thing is to let go of any ideas of the end result and just see what happens....


I began with the idea of expressing the connection I feel between music, colour and movement. They are all different levels of vibration, after all - translated through our senses to affect our emotions.


I started with a painting I created at a live dance event. It is quite a simple image, but I feel that it's quite evocative.

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I found a sheet of thick cellophane and traced the figure, then cut it out with a blade.

This left me with both a stencil shape and a cutout figure

the original painting

 I had 18 sheets of mountboard in the studio which measured 40 x 30 cms, which seemed like a good size to play with. Then I googled 'free sheet music' and printed off several sheets of interesting looking scores. Which I tore up and stuck to the mountboard with PVA glue.....

That looked a bit boring, so I gessoed over them all - which always gives a nice surface to work on. I made it thinner over the music, but thick and squiggly over the centre, where I wanted to put the figure dancing.

If you don't have gesso, get some! 

Gesso is really for sealing canvas and other surfaces before painting with oils or acrylics, and it is quite water resistant (I use watercolours on it for unusual effects). I use tubs of it and it saves me a fortune in paper. I can paint over anything I'm not happy with and recycle paper, wood or canvas into lovely new surfaces. I sometimes mix in colours or texture to give even more exciting beginnings to paintings. You can buy it in white, black or clear, and it sticks to practically anything. I think it's the same as chalk paint that is now popular for upcycling furniture. Yes, I have tried it!
It can be watered down to make it thinner or left as it is, a lovely thick cream. I use it with a roller or a brush.....

Back to the project...... when the gesso was dry, I painted thin coats of red and yellow acrylic randomly over it. 

When that had dried, I started putting the figures on, some by stencilling, some by painting onto the cutout figure and printing it. Some by painting around the cutout..... until I had 18 different images of the same picture.

The problem was that I had completely covered the music scores with paint and gesso, so I tried sanding them down. This gave a lovely random effect, especially where the thicker swirls of gesso showed through the dancer. I wore a facemask for this bit, by the way, as the coloured dust went everywhere.

Next step was to give them all a coat of varnish to protect them......  what do you think?