Stencilled Flux Enhancer

Hi and welcome back to another week on the Chrissie Murphy Designs Blog. For this weeks Tangle Creative Process Mapping Post I’m sharing about this Stencilled Flux Enhancer. As you know, this month subscribers and I have been focusing on Flux, a tangle pattern originally deconstructed by Zentangle®. In Week Two we concentrated on Enhancers and Embellishments, and as usual, I couldn’t help myself.  I had to I to try to create a tile with one of the Flux Enhancers. So let’s get into it so I can show you how this tile was created.

Stencilled Flux Enhancer Zentangle Tile

Stencilling…. again

I am in love with Stencilled Tangling! You will be seeing a lot more of this type of tangling in my work from now on. If you missed last week’s post where I shared about stencilling Flux.  Head over there now to see how this technique works.

This week though I wanted to level up! I wanted to begin stencilling the tangle patterns only. This meant that the background and any other tile elements wouldn’t be stencilled. The only way I knew how to do this was by masking. I’m going to warn you now, this is time consuming, laborious, and I carried it out with the most basic of equipment, but the results…. well you can decide for yourself.

Week 2 of Focus on Flux looked at Enhancers and Embellishments

Below is a pic of the Enhancers and Embellishments I came up with for Week Two of our Focus on Flux. I fell in love with the Striped Aura and Dotted Enhancer and knew I wanted to create a tile with it. To me, this is such a worthwhile exercise, as there’s been quite a few different Tangleations, Enhancers and Embellishments I’ve grown to love.

Flux Enhancers and Embellishments

You’re welcome to join me in these month long focus on Tangles. We’re up to Week Three of the Focus on Flux and we’re exploring Colour Schemes and Techniques. Try to see how many variations you can come up with and then tag your work with #CMDFocusOnFlux. Make sure your post is set to public so I can see it, and I’ll share your work here, on Facebook, on Insta Stories and my next newsletter. I’ve really been looking forward to seeing your work on this, so get in there my friend and show me what you’ve come up with.

Masking with Painter’s Tape

Next I sketched out how I wanted my Stencilled Flux Enhancer to look and then began painstakingly masking around one of the Flux patterns with Painters Tape.

Painters tape used for masking

Painters Tape is really kind to the tile, it removes well (in most instances) without damaging the tile. But it’s not a perfect masking technique. In this case, it was all I had on hand so I tried to make do.

Masking of first area of Flux for Stencilling

Once I’d finished masking, I chose the stencil I wanted to use. I wanted a small scale pattern, because the area I had to use it on was small (generally speaking). If I chose too large a stencil pattern and the effect would be lost.

Stencil that was used for Stencilled Flux Enhancer

I layed my stencil over the top of the tile and secured it with more Painters Tape. I secured it to an old notebook as I had difficulty securing it to my craft mat. It’s important you do secure your stencil well, because if it moves while inking, the stencilled effect will not work properly and that would be terrible Muriel!

Attaching stencil over masked Flux pattern

Then it was time to colour!

The colours this week…. Well just like last week, I was inspired by a photo I’d taken last October. Yep, October is my favourite month, and last October we had our Church Camp at Quinola Lakes on the Atherton Tablelands.

Colour Pallette for Stencilled Flux Enhancer

This was a time I truly treasured, as we were gathered with friends and family, enjoying and loving each other’s company. This photo is from the bonfire we had there of an evening. I had such a beautiful encounter with the Lord at this bonfire so this photo is very meaningful to me.

Again I used a colour palette generator to extract the colours from within the photo, and I created my Stencilled Flux Enhancer Tile with these colours as my inspiration.

Applying Distress Ink over a Stencil to a Flux Zentangle pattern

I used my blender with my Distress Inks and spent some time blending colours. I used the following Distress Inks for this tile:

  • Aged Mahogany
  • Spiced Marmalade
  • Rusty Hinge
  • Festive Berries

First Stencilled Flux complete

When I felt that I had achieved a smooth blend between the colours, I removed the tape and masked off another Flux Enhancer. I secured the stencil again with tape to my sketchbook and then applied another layer of colour.

Masking another area of FluxRemoving painters tape

All up I repeated this process three times to stencil all three larger Flux Enhancers like you can see in the image below.

Stencilling applied to all three Flux Enhancers

Inking my Stencilled Flux Enhancer

Believe it or not, this tile actually began with red ink. Remember I was using my bonfire photo as reference and the crimson colour prompted me to originally ink it in red.

First pass of Red Ink

As soon as I’d finished inking in red though I felt I’d made a mistake. I thought it just didn’t gel… so I grabbed my brown Unipin and reinked the entire tile in brown.

Applying Brown ink over the Red

I liked the brown ink better, feeling it grounded the piece by tying the stencils and ink together and I was much happier with the results.

Shading the Stencilled Flux Enhancer

This month I’m road testing Derwent Inktense Pencils (a post is coming soon). I used Derwent Inktense Pencils to begin the shading in this piece so I could see how they stacked up compared to other watercolours. I used colours that matched my colour pallette and I applied a little bit of colour to particular places I wanted heavier shading, before activating it with water.

Applying Derwent Inktense coloured Pencil for colour

Next I used a water brush because it enabled me to have greater control over the water. I wanted the colour to be delicate and I needed to be careful with how much water I used, because the stencilling had been done with Distress Ink too. If too much water hits the stencilling, the Distress Ink will be activated and I would lose some of the sharpness and shape of the stencilled pattern.

Distress Ink worked with water brush

After the Derwent Inktense had dried I used my Copics to apply some grey shading. As usual I worked with my C4 and C5 Markers, using the W7 marker in really dark areas only.

Still more colour was needed

I then grabbed my Prismacolor Pencils in coordinating colours, these were colours that were similar to my original reference image. I added more colour over the entire piece, working very lightly with my pressure.  In particular, I paid close attention to blending the colours well to obtain an effect like the fire, where you can’t really tell where one colour ends and the other starts. I wanted my blends to be seamless and in the main flux Enhancers I feel like I achieved this.

Prismacolors used for Stencilled Flux Enhancer

The following Prismacolor Premier Coloured Pencils were used for this piece:

  • Firstly PC 945 Sienna
  • PC 948 Sepia
  • PC 940 Sable
  • And PC 943 Ochre Brûlée

But wait, there’s more…

  • PC 922 Rouge Pavot
  • PC 916 Canary Yellow
  • And PC 938 White

The Coloured tile before re-inking

After colouring Re-inking was needed

After colouring the tile, the linework seemed to be dull and dim, so I worked to re-ink the entire tile again in brown ink. It brought back some of the definition that was lost and I’m so glad I took the time to do this.

Re-inked Stencilled Flux Enhancer Tile

Highlights and Embellishment

I began by shading the remainder of the background in white as I wanted to create greater contrast with my colour pallette. This really made the tile “pop” and I finished by applying highlights and embellishments using my white Signo Uniball pen and Kaisercraft glitter gel pens in coordinating colours. I always apply some little dots and dashes as highlights and embellishments.

I also applied a light dusting of Distress Ink to the outer edge of the tile with my blending tool to ground the entire piece.

My finished Stencilled Flux Enhancer tile

So here it is, my finished Stencilled Flux Enhancer tile. I used a Zentangle® Zendala Tile in tan for this piece.

Stencilled Flux Enhancer Zentangle TileStencilled Flux Enhancer Zentangle TileStencilled Flux Enhancer Zentangle Tile

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Until next time, listen to your heart and sharpen your coloured pencils. A masterpiece awaits!

Bless you my friend

Chrissie xx

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