The Toasters ( + Pastiches )

To find some artists, I simply used Google Images to search for "toaster related art" or  "art made from toast". I was able to find pictures of art that was relevant, and use those to trace down the names. The first group of  artists I found were The Toasters.

The Toasters were a trio of street artists that stencilled and stuck their design wherever they could. They had one goal - to get big. In an interview, they explained that the toaster wasn't picked for any special reason. In fact, it was picked because it wasn't special - toasters are a universally recognised kitchen appliance, and there would be a sense of absurdity to finding toasters outside of the kitchen. 

I wanted to try to replicate the style of their stencil, except it'd obviously feature the toaster I was assigned. I struggled a bit with this, as my first rendition of the design looked stiff. I realised this was because there wasn't enough of a tilt compared to the street art. I corrected this when I made my stencil. I did this by drawing my design onto cardboard, and cutting out any areas I wanted the lines to be. Design-wise, I'm really happy with how it turned out overall. That doesn't mean that the stencilling turned out great though. Unfortunately, since my stencil is made of cardboard, it's prone to slight warping and gapping. This means that, even if I stuck it down, any paint I sprayed could seep underneath the stencil, distorting my design. 

I attempted three times, and here's how they went:

1. The first go wasn't very successful, to put it bluntly. I hadn't stuck the stencil down as well as I had thought, and I definitely sprayed too much paint. The paint bled underneath the stencil. While the design is still recognisable, it's incredibly messy, which isn't what I wanted.
2. I switched to an airbrush for a bit more control, and found that it helped a bit. This was my best result. I made sure to stick down the areas that weren't flush to the paper, and the design is significantly clearer. My only issue with it is that I chose to change the colour of my ink. Had I done this in black, I think it would've been a really good pastiche.
3. This version, disappointingly, didn't go to plan. I had painted a background that was similar to one that The Toasters worked on top of. When I airbrushed it with white, a lot of the paint bled, which was down to me being too close to the surface I was working on. This made the ink run and bleed under the stencil. Aside from the stencilling itself not going too smoothly, I found that there wasn't enough contrast. The background design really overwhelmed the stencil, and it makes the piece look too busy to be effective.

I do think that, if I kept trying, I could use this stencil to create a really effective pastiche, but it's not really the sort of idea I wanted to pursue too much. If I were to revisit it, I'd definitely be more careful of how much ink / paint I was spraying, and I'd try to ensure that the stencil was as flush to the paper as possible.