(Warning to any meditation addicts out there - this post has absolutely nothing to do with meditation, so you will not get your fix here...)
Yay! The exciting day has arrived! About 4 months ago my brother Pat, who lives in England, asked me to do a stencil for his newly renovated house. Just being asked to do the stencil was quite a compliment because my brother is an industrial designer and very particular about his house furnishings.
To give you an example - he painted his living-room seven times before he got exactly the right shade of white he wanted. (And he only got that by mixing two other shades together.) After the room had been painted he ordered some furniture on-line and said he nearly vomited when his couch arrived and it wasn't quite the right shade of white. I didn't know that there was more than one shade of white...let alone seven.
So, getting this request from my brother was very flattering. (Kind of a like a first year piano student being called up to conduct the London Philharmonic.)
This stenciling stuff is all very new to me. A friend told me about it a few months ago and it seemed like a hobby I could do where I could just do a bit of work every day - designing, or cutting, or spraying a stencil. I sold my first stencil on e-bay just before Christmas and was so happy because it was the first money I'd earned in over ten years! Wowser. Quite an achievement. I couldn't believe someone would pay to have an artwork of mine on their walls. (I have three very artistic siblings, and they couldn't believe it either).
For the stencil design I picked a photo that I'd taken about 2 years ago of my nephew Aidan. This is one of my favorite photos, because it captures Aidan's gentle personality.
This was the stencil design I came up with:
I sprayed the stencil onto flat canvas, then rolled it up and sent it over to Pat. This is a close-up photo of part of the stencil -
and these are the photos he just sent me. I think it looks great! He paid me for it, so now when people ask me what I do - instead of telling them I lie in bed with an ice-pack on my head, I'll tell them I'm an artist. Woohoo.
