This month I will show you an array of tiles I made, at my studio clay class or at home, using the stencil method of applying images. For a full explanation of this method and some tiles I made in the fall of 2019, look here.

I made these tiles in fall 2019 at the studio tile class. They were bisque fired after the class ended and I picked up the project when we got back to class in January 2020 to glaze them. This time I used no resist but glazed the entire surface. (I think I was wanting to be finished with the past projects and get on to the new ones!)

These tiles are all @ 4″ x 4″, except for the last one at 7″ x 7″. You may notice I am using a different clay here, a very dark stoneware selection. It fires at Cone 6.

You may also notice some repeated shapes – the house, for instance. That is a good thing about stencils – they can be reused. Now, for this application I use magazine paper as the stencil material. It’s fine for a few passes but of course it disintegrates pretty quickly. You can cut your own stencils out of film, or of course there are millions of pattern stencils you can buy.

Additionally, you can see in the last tile the two birds – one made from the positive image, one from the negative. In other words, I cut out the bird shape and also kept the residue shape, and used them both.

You can also flip your stencil over and get a reversed image, such as the two heads looking at each other in the last tile.

OK, we are all caught up on stencil tiles! Thank you for following along with me.