ART IN THE HOUSE.
How to Stencil in Oil Colours.
Ordinarytube colours should be used for stencilling on your furniture mixed with a little copal varnish and slightly thinned with turps. Driers are put up in tubes under the names ofsacrumor sugar of lead, and it is as well to mix a little with your colours as it makes them dry off quickly. The white should be mixed up in a batch with the varnish, driers and turps, and be of the consistency of thick cream. Your tinting colours should be squeezed out on your palette so that you can readily mix up your tones.
Fig. 1.—Panel of corner cupboard decorated in stencilling. The centre panel is founded on the iris, with the daisy at base.
Fig. 1.—Panel of corner cupboard decorated in stencilling. The centre panel is founded on the iris, with the daisy at base.
Fig. 1.—Panel of corner cupboard decorated in stencilling. The centre panel is founded on the iris, with the daisy at base.
Stencil brushes are round and short in the hair, so that they present a flat surface on the stencil. You require three or four, two about an inch in diameter, one five-eighths and one three-eighths or a quarter of an inch. Two or three small flat hog brushes for touching in ties and putting in particular parts of a stencil should be handy. We will begin with the stiles of the door of chiffonier, which is decorated with the ornamental stencil B,Fig. 1infirst article. We put the corners in first and this corner I cut separately as I could not fit in the stencil I was using. Having done this see how your other stencil will work out, for it does not look workmanlike to start at the top and find that you have to end it with a different spacing to what you started with. If you begin in the centre of each stile and work to the corners you will obtain a symmetrical result. Always remember to space out any part of your work which is conspicuous, so that the stencil seems to just fit in the space as though it were cut specially for it. I find it a good plan to have some pins handy, and just tap in a couple, one at each end of the stencil, to keep it from shifting while you rub on the colour. Both your hands are then at liberty. Or you can get a friend to hold the plate down on the wood, but the pinning does almost better. If you shift the stencil before you have knocked out the impression you will not get a sharp result.
Having tinted your white to the desired tone spread a little of the colour on to your palette and knock your stencil brush on to this colour a few times, so that the brush takes up some of the colour, then begin by gently knocking the brush on to the wood over the cut-out portions until you have completely covered them with colour. Don’t try to do this too quickly. Proceed gently, getting the colour out of your brush by degrees, and take up the colour from the palette in the same gentle manner. The reason for this caution is that if you take up too much colour at a time in your brush and knock it violently on the stencil plate, you will find when you lift up the same that the impression, instead of being sharp will be blobby at the edges through the colour having worked under the stencil.
The art of stencilling is in getting sharp, clean impressions, and this can only come of care and taking time. On no account get the colour too thin. It should be of such a consistency as will enable you to knock it out of the brush with slight exertion. If too stodgy thin it with a drop or two of turps and linseed oil, and then mix with palette knife, but on no account get turps into the stencil brush or you will get very bad impressions, for the colour is sure then to run under the stencil. Therefore again I say, don’t hurry.
I have said nothing yet as to the tones of colour to be used. This is a matter of taste, and is a most difficult subject to write about. Two artists will use the same colours, and yet one with an eye for colour will give us beautiful harmonies, and the other one wanting this delicacy of perception will give us crudity. Form in your mind some tone of colour suggested, say, by the warm mellow colours of autumn, the soberer russet and greys of the winter, or the light, fresh, delicate tints of spring, and carry these suggestions out in your decoration. The corner cupboard,Fig. 1, we might tint in the russet tones, and you will find that such colours as raw sienna, raw umber, yellow ochre,terra verte, burnt sienna, chromes Nos. 1 and 2, Prussian blue, French ultramarine, and light red will supply you with a very varied palette. White tinted with yellow ochre, raw sienna or raw umber are all good tones for stencilling in, and each of them can be mixed or toned with one of the others. The addition ofterra verteor Prussian blue will give you soft tones of green. By using such a yellow as ochre to make greens you obtain softer, quieter tones than if you used chromes. Suppose you have small quantities of the above three tints mixed on your palette, you can take a little of one in your brush and knock that out on the stencil, and then a little of the next tint and knock that out, and so on with the third. In this way you get a variety of tints in the stencilled border and yet a certain “tone” will run all through, which gives one a sense of harmony, and at the same time variety, and so lessens the hard mechanical look which stencilling in just one colour is apt to give. Then, too, when you have knocked out one impression before lifting off the stencil, you can take one of the hog hair brushes or the smallest stencil brush and put in the body and the portion of the wings around it of the butterflies B in the corner cupboard,Fig. 1, in a little darker colour, say more raw umber or sienna. It is very little more trouble and greatly adds to the general effect to give these accents. The idea is to make the butterflies come off the web, so keep the web lighter and the insects darker.In the border B,Fig. 1, infirst articlethe flowers might be touched in to bring them off the lines of the background.
The pattern on the spaces surrounding the door A,Fig. 1, can still be in the same tones, varied as I have suggested, but the panels of the doors being themselves more naturalesque, might be a little more positive in colouring,i.e., the leaves and grass can be put in, in quiet, soft tones of green, while the flowers could be in lemon chrome and white or bluish purple made of rose madder and French blue or Indian red and Prussian blue lightened with white, but don’t make the colouring too bright, so that it is in too strong contrast to the stiles. Greens made of blue and chrome are much cruder than if you use yellow ochre or raw sienna. Going back now to the colouring of the chiffonierFig. 1(p. 13) in first article. The plinth or bottom D can be in low-toned greens, not too dark but darker than the leaves in the panels, while the daisies can be in grey made of white, raw umber, and a touch of blue, with centres in yellow. Stencil the flowers first and then with a small brush put in the yellow centres. A slight touch of pink at the edges of the daisies might look well, effected by using a small hog brush and a little rose madder. The leaves around the column keep in the quiet greens used in plinth D. The back of the upper part of chiffonier,Fig. 2, with its shelf can be treated like the panels in colouring, and the festoon above the shelf can have the flowers in the grey and the leaves in russet not too dark, and the ribbon in pale blue. As you have a white surface to decorate, be careful not to get your colouring too strong. Use plenty of white with all your colours, for you will find that delicate tones are much pleasanter to live with than heavy ones. A little of the pure colours from the tubes will tint a lot of white, so the colours will not be a great expense. Buy the flake white in half-pound tubes for cheapness.
In arranging stencils act somewhat on the plan I have observed, which is to keep the more naturalesque stencils for such places as panels or other flat, broad surfaces, and as a framing to them the more ornamental patterns, to contrast with the natural ones. The butterfly border on the stiles of the corner cupboard B,Fig. 1, is a good foil to the iris panel, just as the border B,Fig. 1, is a good foil to the daisy panel in the chiffonier.
The conventional grass seemed a suitable pattern for the plinth, and such a purely ornamental design as a festoon not inappropriate to the shaped top.
I have mentioned before that great variety can be obtained by combining portions of different stencils. The plinth D,Fig. 1, of chiffonier, for instance, is a combination of two, the flowers being from one and the grass itself from another. The butterfly and sprig running border,Fig. 1, insecond article, I have shown in variation, and the border in corner cupboard, A,Fig. 1, is made by taking the sprig portion only and putting the root in between each impression. When you want only a portion of a stencil cover over the rest with paper, so that you do not get an impression of a part you donotrequire.
Some colours are very fugitive such as indigo, crimson lake, yellow lake, etc.; but the colours I have mentioned may be relied upon for permanency.
When the stencilling is thoroughly dry it will preserve the work to give it a coat of white hard varnish. Apply this freely with a flat hog brush (or regular varnish brush), seeing that you miss no portion of the surface. Keep it from the dust until dry and you will have a pretty and useful article of furniture. Of course you may have some other article to do up than the chiffonier I have sketched, which I took simply because it was to my hand, but you can easily apply these hints to your own necessities.
When your stencils are done with you wash them thoroughly in turpentine, both back and front, and dry them and put them away, keeping them flat.
While you are using your stencils wipe the back after each impression, so that if any colour has worked there you can remove it. Have an old board and some newspaper to lay the stencil on when you clean it.
With the batch of stencils given with these articles endless variations and combinations are possible. Many of the patterns too could be easily adapted for needlework; in fact, you have only to lightly stencil your material in water colour and work over the impressions. Use Chinese white if a dark textile, and lamp black and Chinese white if a light one.
Though I have advised white paint for these two articles of furniture, there is no reason why you shouldn’t try dark ones. Stencilling is very effective on dark paint, and a cabinet or cupboard painted a dark brownish green would look well with stencilling in shades of old gold. To get a rich colour the final coat must have very little white with it. For a brownish green use burnt sienna, black, deep chrome, and touch of Prussian blue, with only enough white to make it light enough.
Fred Miller.