Studio: international art (42.1908)

Studio- Talk

STENCIL CHRISTMAS CARD BY NORMAN GARSTIN

air-brush, which must give very deli-
cate results ; but the end will justify
the means, and in art all means are
good, because they help us to variety.

Stencil - making requires a great
deal of forethought, particularly with
several plates, and a very nice pre-
cision in fitting these together. In a
word, to make a good stencil, one
wants, besides a pen-knife and a
brush, prevision and precision, some
invention, and a lot of patience.
If you succeed, you have produced
a work of art which you can multi-
ply at will, but which, nevertheless,
need never become common; for
each example is a separate creation
of chosen colour and tone, and will
contain variations in proportion to
your personality; and this variation
due to temperament is of the essence
of art, and should make the collect-
ing of stencils also an art requiring
more than usual connoisseurship.
I am,

Yours sincerely,

-r, Norman Garstin.

Penzance.

also be taken to avoid loose and disconnected
parts, which will rip up and break off when the
brushwork begins. A good design is tied together
by the very parts that render it beautiful in com-
position. In using several plates of course the
greatest care must be taken to make them coincide,
but experience will show that, even when they are
exact in edge, the brushwork either leaves an
interval or else overlaps ; therefore for this some
allowance must be made.

In stencil-cutting I use tough drawing-paper, lay
it on glass, and cut with a sharp-pointed knife,
reinforce weak, delicate parts, and paint it with
knotting or some such varnish to further strengthen
it. This necessity for strength of course vanishes if
you use the air-brush or the syringe recommended
by Herr Jungnickl; but for brushwork—and the
brush has its charm as well as its faults —it is
necessary to have plates of some power of resistance.
I generally use oil colour as being more manage-
able than water colour; but it must be used very
sparingly, rubbing steadily until the colour gently
stains the paper; this leaves a very delicate edge,
and it is possible to graduate your tones to any
extent. I confess I have no experience of the

STUDIO-TALK.

(From our Own Correspondents.)

LONDON.—The Annual Exhibition of Arts
and Crafts at the Baillie Gallery, held
just before Christmas, has never been
of a higher standard. The Voysey
room, devoted entirely to work carried out from
designs by Mr. C. F. Voysey, and the beautiful
display of Martin-ware made the exhibition par-
ticularly rich in decorative work of distinction. A
room of drawings by Miss Pamela Colman Smith
re-introduced that artist in a new phase, or rather
the further development of a recent phase. Her
music pictures, which are drawn under the influence
of music, in concert rooms and at other times, have
the qualities of mystery and rhythm which are derived
from this rare source. A set of twelve- etchings by
Mr. Gordon Craig, on view in these galleries, were
confined to plates suggesting highly imaginative
scenes which he hopes to re-create with the illusion
of stage-craft in the modern theatre. Meanwhile
we are glad to see these plans preserved thus by
plates which in themselves are of great artistic
value.

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