Create your own face stencils

Well , Julie Fei Fan Balzer has done it again.

She has come out with a line of face stencils

for those of us who LOVE her art journal pages

and wish we could just draw those darn faces.

So, I thought what about making my own face stencil?

But wait, I can't draw faces.

So you see the dilemma.

What if I found a magazine image of a face and

used it as a template to create a stencil?

Now we are on to something.

I found this image from a local magazine/newspaper.

I tore it out and then using a black sharpie,

I traced over the prominent lines I wanted

to feature in the stencil;

hair lines, eyes, nose, mouth, etc.
You can see that I left out the arm and
just drew hair strands across it.

I then laid my clear mylar over the image

and retraced over those lines with the sharpie.

Next cut out those shapes/lines with

a sharp x-acto knife.

Lay out the stencil on the already prepared background

of your art journal page. I used a make-up sponge

and dabbed black ink into the spaces

(Colorbox archival pigment).

Went back with a brush tip Pitt pen to fill in

the line gaps from the stencil.

I also went in and thickened some lines and

added some more hair curls.

I started to shade the highlights and lowlights

of her face. Looking back at the magazine image

will help you here to see light and dark areas.

All that's left is to add your text and any
embellishments you might want.

You can even take that same stencil,

flip it over and just fill in a few basic lines from

the stencil, just to get the shape of the face

and placement of the eyes and nose.

 I then went in and added a different mouth,

accented the eyes and really changed the hair.

A completely different girl.

How fun and easy is that?

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial from
 Cathy Calamas of Paper Traders.