PAINTING street art inspired Bird

FOCUS STUDY- Street art Inspired painting

Artist Model = Component

Born and raised in Grey Lynn, component taught himself the art of stenciling. While Grey Lynn has gentrified, component's sense of place remains integral to his work. From spray-painting city walls to working with canvas for the country's most prestigious galleries, component is traveling a journey that brings colour and consideration to the streets and homes of Aoteaora. Component was shaped by his environment. Now he helps shape it.

Another Auckland street artist who is known for use of stencils and Manu in their work is the artist Hayley King, better known as "Flox". As an aerosol and stencil artist with a fine art degree, Flox has been making her mark on the inner cityscape of Auckland since 2003.

Her trademark native birds, ferns and flowers are a celebration of Aotearoa’s environmental taonga. Using distinctly vibrant and confident colour on a scale combined with delicacy they have magically transformed grey walls into vibrant depictions of the natural world. she has also illustrated a well know cchildrens story book, "Tu Meke Tui" written by Malcolm Clark. Here is the book in Te Reo, or hear it in English here.

PART 1 Bird Stencil style image

You need to have the photo of your bird on your computer. You will edit it online and then print it out to transfer to your background.

  1. Open up photopea [photopea.com] and open photo

  2. [optional step] Use the rectangle tool to select your bird [remove most of background and have a rectangle shape [like an A4 piece of paper]

  3. IMAGE > CROP

  4. IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > POSTERIZE [3 levels]

  5. IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > THRESHOLD [adjust slider] You will need to make some decisions as to how much detail is shown. for example in my Tuli image, the white puff ball is missing so I need to draw that back in!

  6. FILE > EXPORT AS > JPG

  7. Save image and attach to google classroom for the teacher to print to A3 size.

PART 2 Background design

  1. you will begin to design your background by doing at least 2-3 designs in your visual diary. Look at the work of "Component" for ideas. You may also like to look at artist Sonia Delaunay [and husband Robert Delaunay] for ideas. Add some colour to your designs with pencil.

**NOTE. your design does not have to cover all of the background - look at Components work and you can see there are blank areas in some places...

  1. Select your best design and draw it up to your canvas. For best results use a ruler and measure [for geometric] for circular designs - use a compass or round objects. There are two videos below that show you different ways to do your design.

Paint your background

  1. Use light bright colours and a limited palette [pick 2-3 colours and use tints and shades of these hues].

  2. you need to use a hard edge technique and also so blending within each shape [just like we did with our title page with black ink but with colour and white]

PART 3 Putting it all together!

  1. You will need to create a base stencil which covers the entire positive space of your bird design. The easiest away to do this is to cut away all the negative space on your A3 printout.

  2. Place this on your background where you want your main focus point to be and trace around the shape.

  3. block in this shape with either a white or a light blend of colours appropriate to your bird... *NOTE this needs to be quite light and simple as your background is quite busy, think about how you will create contrast

  4. Painting your bird. You will be doing this with Indian ink. You need to use carbon paper to transfer some guiding lines from your bird. think about wings, tail eyes and beak. if you have branches, add that in as well. mark in any large areas of black.

  5. Use your photocopy and carbon lines as a guide to where to paint in your black areas. You can always add white back in if you make a mistake.. TAKE YOUR TIME. think about what details you need to focus on - like eyes! and feathers textures in areas.