for a start, do some scribbling :)
often there is too many details in a drawing, choose only the most characteristic shapes (at least fot the beginning)!!!
once you find your drawing acceptable, try to imagine how it would look spray painted. It is not that easy, you will be surprised how different the sprayed picture will look, compared to the painted one.
Now the hardest part starts, the cutting. But before you do that, you have to glue the drawing unto a harder paper, preferably paperboard (when glueing, make sure that the whole surface is covered with gluten, therefore use spray glue). Notice, the thicker and harder the paper you use, the longer it will last, but the harder the cutting!!!I oftenonly use normal printing paper for the stencil, but then you have to buy the good paint like "Montana Gold" (Good paint covers better and is less wet, really worth it!)
WHAT YOU NEED! 1st & foremost!!! get a SHARP Knife with a small, replaceable, pointy blade (available in every Arts shop) 2nd spray glue 3rd spray cans, colour (i.e. Montana Gold) 4th a subsurface to cut the stencil on
Now start cutting
when you take a close look, you will realize that i dont cut exactly as i draw, in the next photo you will see that i added some zick-zack pattern to the feathers.
it's a hummingbird
as you can see in this stencil, you can not cut a whole circle, as the inside will fall out. the art about stencils is, to make those connections you add to the picture invisible, or harmonic. The human eye for example is a challange every single time you do a face. You will be confronted with this problem quite often, you can make your way around it, using a two or multiple layered stencil, but don't bother for now.
when making a a stencil with such fine connections, make sure that you are very neat, and better use a thin paperboard, cutting will still work and it won't break so easially. (and use a sharp cutter, carpet knifes are not convinient, as they are to rough)
shapes don't always have to be realistic, in many cases, a stencil looks better when you apply a special cutting style
this for example is a somewhat Matrix style, but when you keep it steady throughout the stencils, its cool.
when you are done cutting, you do your first try-outs, and look for mistakes that have to be fixed.
the cool thing is that with photoshop you can use photos and make stencils of them, where you can actually recognize the person if you do it well
unfortunately i always give my finished work away, so i can only show you the rough outcome, not the proper picture of lots of my stuff. (notice how i made the connections in the eye)
the nice thing about stencils is that you can't see how it will look afterall. the moment of truth is when you lift the stencil off the sprayed paper
that's supposed to be me. when doing faces, you take the shadows in the face instead of the outline which you use when drawing a face.
then you start playing around...
...try out colours, which way around the stencil looks better and what other stencils fit in.
this will be a two layered stencil, in order to use two colours...
...that is the second layer.
and this the outcome :)
you can put stencils on ANYTHING, just not on other peoples or public property please. As beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, you can not be sure if other people will be as happy about your stencil as you yourself might be. Art is nothing that you force on others, but rather something that you hide and only people that are worth seeing it, will.
Dog in Town? make a canvas (by Anisá)
here you see that on the actual canvas, the lines are fine and straight and there is no typical airbrush transition. You achieve that by glueing your stencils to the canvas, for which you have to use the spray glue, and only a little bit of it, otherwise you can't loosen the stencil of the canvas anymore :(
if you don't stick the stencil unto the canvas, the spray paint will, due to the air pressure, lift the stencil and colour will get under the paper. It is nice at times, and can be a style of stencil, but you will find out for yourself!
hold the spray can approximately 20 cm away from the stencil
Mr. Teddy (by Marko) on cavas
make sure that you don't get the picture too wet with the paint, you will see that the stencil gets wavy and will lift itself of the canvas. so for a stronger colour rather spray it two or three times and let it dry in between.
after spraying, leave the stencil to dry for some minutes before lifting it, othewise it might become messy and you will distribute unwanted spots on the canvas. However, if the colour is completly dry, you might not get the stencil off the canvas anymore, so wait a few minutes until the colour is mushy (or simply use good paint which isn't wet)
His Holiness Abdu'l-Bahá on papyrus
instead of spray-painting, i used acryl colour and dabed it with a sponge, but you can also use a fine foam roller, like you use for painting your room ;) (with different tools, you achieve different patterns)
"Purple Rain" consisting of 8 different stencils of which 2 are 2 layered
