Canvas Painting at The Lab

This Sunday visitors to The Laboratory of all ages went on a canvas painting frenzy. Participants were shown how to make a stencil using oiled manilla stencil card. 

Our budding artists selected a starting image from a range of potential images provided to use as their stencil, formulated a plan for their canvas and sketched this onto a piece of paper. 

Once our artists had come up with the idea for their canvas, they painted their background using acrylic paint, learning to mix colours and use a range of different brush strokes to create varying effects.

The prepared stencil could then be laid on the top of the canvas to decide where would be the best spot for the image. When the perfect spot had been decided the stencil was taped into position using a piece of masking tape and acrylic paint was applied over the top of the stencil.

The good thing about using the oiled manilla card is that it is reusable, the stencil can be wiped down and applied again and again without the card getting soggy, splitting or blotting (obviously as long as you take care with your stencilling and the cleaning of the stencil).

As a final touch some of our artists decided to add embellishments and collage to complete the canvas.

Here is what we got up

William and Archie enjoying a refreshment whilst working hard on their beautiful canvases

Frankie creating a stunning abstract design using masking tape on her canvas

Stanley carefully stencilling a butterfly on the canvas

A busy afternoon canvas painting at The Laboratory

Some people chose to apply additional collage to their canvases

 And here are some of the finished pieces

A stencil dragonfly hovering over a beautiful lake

A beautiful mixed media canvas featuring masking tape, stencils and collaged butterflies

A stencilled bike leans up against a parkland tree

A kandinsky style canvas by a 3year old!!! - with some fancy stencilled feet

A stenciled cat and butterfly look out on an evening sunset

Lively and energetic colour blast with stencilled butterflies

Masking tape beech trees with collaged dragonflies

The Laboratory run workshops every weekend, why not join us on Saturday 23rd February for our St David's day art workshop and make your own flag, welsh lady, dragon and daffodil art. The workshops are run on a drop in basis between 12 noon and 4:00 pm and cost £3:00 per person. For more information contact Lisa on the_laboratory@hotmail.co.uk