1. One day, Mr. Sands took us on a magical journey to the computer lab where we chose a picture of something we wanted to make a stencil of. After choosing the picture, we went into photoshop and changed the threshold so that the picture would be black and white. Next, we printed the altered picture, projected it onto poster board, and traced the shape. Lastly, we used an xacto knife to cut out the black shapes (forming positive and negative space) , thus creating a stencil.
2. To make the frame, we cut and nailed together four pieces of wood and then used a staple gun to attach a piece of carboard for the base of the background. In order to make the carboard pretty, we ripped out pictures from art books and arranged them in a collage type fashion. My background was composed of mainly black and white photos arranged nonformally for my background.
3. Positive space is the shapes that show up after spray painting, and negative space is the area where there is no spray paint. The positive and negative space created a really nice contrast.
4. When using the xacto knife, Mr. Sands had one rule- NO CUTTING YOURSELF. We had to be careful not to get our hands in the way when cutting and we had to put a cutting board underneath so that we would not scratch up the table. After a while I started to get callouses on my hands!
5. My first try with the spray paint I really wanted to use hot pink, but there was not enough contrast, so I had to remove the stencils, lightly spraypaint the background white, and then use black for my stencil instead. I had to trim the edges of the stencil multiple times before it would fit inside the frame.
