»Stencils

Extar's Guide to Stencilling

Rambling Preface
Fun Things To Spend Money On
Techniques
Designing Stencils
Surfaces

Rambling Preface

First off, the definition of some terms:

If it isn't sprayed on a wall, then it's not really graffiti.

Street Art is mostly just graffiti for middle class people.

What I have done is neither. I've used stencils and spray paint on bits of wood I found in the garage or painting boards I got from stationery shops.

The main reason I haven't done anything on walls outside yet is that most of my stencils are printed on paper which isn't terribly practical to work with if you're in a hurry outside. Plus, it's not as if Heckmondwike has an engaging graffiti scene.

2004: At some point there was someone with some talent operating in Heckmondwike. Talent then gave way to juvenilia.

2008: The same work remains, only more sun-bleached and chipped.

For want of a better term, this is called a 'guide'. I don't really feel proficient or arogant enough as a 'stencil artist' to be telling anyone definitively how to do anything. There's not a one true way of doing stencils anyway, these are just observations that I've made. If you find any of it helpful, well that's just great.

Tiresome Cliches

Before I get onto the guide proper, I might as well wax lyrical about the peculiar trends I see on DeviantArt where I also upload my stencils. This really ought to be a blog update, because it's just a rant. It has occurred to me how I'm actually guilty of a few of these crimes too.

I Banksy Therefore I Am - What Banksy does, he does very well, it's his thing. Too many people seem content to just ape his whole subverting-the-urban-environment thing. It's getting tiresome.

Ken Syndrome - Why bother carefully designing your own stencil when you could just grab a body and have something hilarious and jaunty replace the head like an animal's head, or an old cassette, or a loudspeaker. A man in a suit with a racoon head? How marvelously original!

Yogi Bear Syndrome - Why bother carefully designing your own stencil when you could just grab a picture of an animal and stick a hilarious hat on its head? A bear wearing a cowboy hat? How marvelously jaunty!

Image -> Mode -> Indexed Color - This one actually takes a degree of talent/perseverence but I can't see the point in it. There are a lot of people who make stencils that use four or five different layers and shades. It ends up just looking like a slightly blurry printout of an 8-colour indexed image from Photoshop. I think it loses all the immediacy of a stencil and strays perilously close to just being screen printing.

How did I start?

For some reason one day I decided that I wanted to have a go at stencilling. I'd done a couple of stencils before on guitar amps and cases just to so I could identify them easily, nothing specifically arty.

I went to B&Q in Dewsbury and bought some spray paints from there in various primary colours and colours I thought I could make good use of. These paints were radically overpriced at Ł5 per 500ml can and didn't turn out to be of particularly good quality.

The first stencils I did were from things I'd printed out at uni and from a radiation symbol that I drew on some card. The next few stencils were mostly of things that I thought would make good stencils, like the Cyberdemon from Doom which had a limited colour pallete; the picture of Arnie from Commando which was only monochrome to begin with; or the Shell logo which is essentially a stencil to begin with.

How did it develop?

Once I'd got my shit together and done a few stencils I realised that a) the paints I got from B&Q weren't very good and b) I needed some more colours so I searched on the internet and found monstercolors.co.uk which is based in Glasgow and from where I ordered some more paints. There are other similar sites which you might want to try instead.

The paint from B&Q isn't very opaque, the black background is showing through the orange and has dulled it to the extent it looks rust/brown in colour.

monstercolors paints were of much higher quality and are about Ł3 a 400ml can so considerably cheaper too, they also have a massive range of colours in comparison to B&Q. You can order a variety of caps from monstercolors. The cans come with a medium cap and seeing as I didn't realise they came with nozels I additionally ordered some fat and thin caps too.

The paints from monstercolors are far more opaque. With one coat, the white on the face is still bright and vibrant despite being on a very dark background.

I quickly ran out of painting boards bought in an offer from Lidl and had to move over to finding bits of wood in the garage. Additionally I found a few pieces of chipboard from some kitchen units that were being thrown out in a skip I walked past on my way back from uni.

Gradually I began to use Photoshop more in creating stencils, mostly for contrast/brightness adjustment and for changing to monochrome or indexed colour. Additionally I modified some stencils by hand, such as adding the guns and tracks to the Car stencil, or drawing the Dwarf stencil from scratch in Paint.

Fun Things To Spend Money On

Breathing Masks

If you're going to do anything with spray paint, particularly in an enclosed space, buy some sort of breathing mask. I realised pretty quickly after I started stencilling in the garage that the constant headaches and sniffly noses were probably a result of the spray paint. I started off with a simple foam mask with a little metal clip to fit around your nose which was kind of okay but I still ended up with headaches if I was doing stencils for a while. Later I got a proper breathing mask which was about Ł15 from B&Q (they're only a tenner from monstercolors), and that does the trick. Plus I get to scare neighbours, walking around in a full-on face mask. Combine it with a balaclava for that classic urban terrorist look.

Plastic Gloves

These are handy for keeping your hands clean and letting you hold stencils down by hand as you're spraying. Spray paint is very sticky and will build up on the gloves after a while, so you'll want disposable ones. I have disposable ones that smell of apple which is nice. Pull them off in a dramatic fashion and speak in a German accent for psycho-surgeon bonus points.

Colours

If you're doing stencils, you could quite feasibly get away with just black and white or even just black. The stencils of Banksy and stencil godfather Blek Le Rat (who Banksy himself lists as a major influence) both seem to use black and white almost exclusively to fit in with their photo-realistic style. I prefer more colours though and on each stencil tend to use a solid background colour with another colour for the outline of the figure and black for shading and detail. Consequently I get through quite a lot of black.

Caps

Really, caps seem like they're more important for free-hand stuff which I'm not really covering here. Basically, fat caps have a wider spread and faster coverage--good if you're trying to tag somewhere neatly and quickly. Skinny caps tend to have a narrower spread and slower coverage so are better for fading and blending colours. For stencils, it doesn't particularly matter which you use as you're mostly after solid colours however skinnys probably give you that greater degree of control particularly if you want to fade and blend colours smoothly. The fat caps I have are very unforgiving so screw-ups are harder to avoid but the fast coverage usually results in a sharper image. Skinny caps seem to jam up more.

Cleaning Caps

Caps jam up with paint which is a pain. After you've finished with a colour, turning the can upside down and spraying for a while until there is no more paint blowing out helps stop caps jamming up. Once a cap is jammed up there isn't much I've found that really works. Leaving them to soak in paint thinner doesn't have much of an effect. I haven't tried brush cleanser.

Techniques

Some of these things are probably kind of obvious

Basecoats

I often like putting background colours on my stencils instead of just leaving bare wood. If you do a base coat, try to make it as thin as possible whilst still getting a good covering. The thicker the basecoat, the longer subsequent layers of paint will take to dry.

Getting Paint to Run

You need to either spray for a long time at a distance or spray very close to the surface and you'll quickly get some running. This is handy for making things look more 'gritty' and messy which is what I like.

Droplets and Splashes

Pressing the cap down lightly, just enough for it not to get a clean stream, you can get the can to spit paint which is kind of handy. I used this effect on Knife for the spots of red. You'll probably want to actually spray above the surface you want seeing as the bigger drops tend to fall lower in an arc. You'll get a lot of paint building up around the cap doing this which you can flick by hand onto the surface for added bonus points. Make Pollock proud. This will jam up your caps quickly if you don't wipe them down.

Fading

I'm bloody awful at this one. As far as I can tell, you just need to pull the can away from the surface as you're spraying and do that in a neat and uniform-enough way for it to look like a nice gradient as opposed to some lame little trails.

Getting Clean Edges

Most of the time, you'll probably want clean edges on your stencils, so things look neat. You need to hold the stencil as close to the surface as possible for a nice clean edge. This is more a problem with paper stencils that flop around more. What I do is use drawing pins to roughly hold the stencil in place and then hold the stencil down with my fingers as I spray particular areas. If you point the spray so that it blows inward to the stencil, this can also avoid flapping around. An alternative to this is to use cardboard stencils which I need to do more, or alternatively to use fuck loads of masking tape which I don't have the patience for. I often put a background colour as a kind of basecoat on my stencils, once the paint has dried so it's just tacky but won't smudge or run, you can press paper stencils onto the paint and the basecoat will actually hold them in place. As long as you don't try this whilst the basecoat is too wet, you'll be able to carefully pull the stencil off the surface once you're done without any smudging or scuffs.

Spot Fixes

You might scuff some wet paint and need to clean up the area. Get some cereal box cardboard, cut a small hole in the middle of it, around the size of your finger or larger to fit what you're trying to cover up. Make sure you spray the correction whilst holding the stencil away from the surface so you a) don't scuff the paint more or b) get a blurred edge on the correction so it's harder to spot. These corrections can still be seen if you examine the end piece because a second layer of paint visibly sits on top of the old layer. These things usually look better from further away anyway and maybe you like that untidy look. I tend not to fret about scuffs.

Lifting the Stencil

This is something I've not used beyond merely experimenting. If you deliberately lift the stencil away from the surface you can get a blurred edges effect. This could conceivably be useful for something but most of the time you want the stencil flush with the surface for nice, clean edges. You couldn't really do this with paper stencils.

Too Much Paint

Most of the time, you'll want just enough paint to get a decent covering. Too much paint takes longer to dry, scuffs more easily, and makes subsequent layers take longer to dry and scuff more easily too.

Too Many Layers

If you pile on the layers of paint, such as covering up major fuck ups or being indecisive about background colours etc, the paint takes far longer to dry and the paint runs a lot easier and seems to scuff more. Avoid this.

I had made numerous screw-ups on this board prior to doing the dwarf stencil. You can see where I scuffed the paint removing the stencil on my initials.

Wiping Stencils

Kind of obvious this one, if you want to use a stencil again, such as a signature stencil, then after you've finished using it, dab the wet paint paint off with a rag. Even on card, a build-up of paint over time reduces the clarity of the edges and can warp the stencil.

Designing Stencils

Most of my stencils are based on photographs or images sourced from Google Image Search, this doesn't make me a particularly hardcore stencilier as it's pretty much the easiest way of doing it. First when deciding on what you're going to make a stencil of, consider how complicated the image is (you're going to have to cut around all the edges after all.) I started off with simple shapes like the radiation symbol in See You Tomorrow and the Shell logo before moving onto more complicated images.

It's probably best to start with something simple.

The higher contrast the image, the less work you'll have to do in photoshop and the less guessing you'll have to make when deciding how to cut out the stencil. The majority of the figures or designs on my stencils are only one or two layers because I prefer the effect and because I have neither the patience nor the plethora of subtle shades of paint to do multi-layered designs.

"But I need a stage-by-stage explanation of how you make a stencil!"

Well that's okay, because I've written out such an explanation, detailing how I made the Entombed stencil because it's a fairly simple stencil to explain.

1. I 'source' the photo of the band that was in the liner notes for their awesome debut album 'Left Hand Path'. After I finish the stencil I find out this is actually a slightly different photo than the one in the liner notes, but it's from the same shoot and is still cool.

s>2. I fire up Photoshop and run the Stencil Wizard.

~~2. I fire up Photoshop and hit 'Indexed Color' in the mode menu.~~

2. I fire up Photoshop, set the picture into grayscale, set the contrast to 100 and then adjust the brightness until I get the right amount of detail.

3. I want to make it a big stencil so I divide the image in half and print off each half. The majority of the image is white, so the areas I cut out will be the black bits. I find an appropriately sized piece of chipboard, wipe it down, and spray it white.

4. I trim the edges of the stencils with a craft knife, stick them together with masking tape and then cut out the areas in black. Because there are some indistinct areas on the band member's bodies and because I prefer it to be all one stencil I make sure to cut strips of paper that link the faces and any other detail on their bodies to the main white area of the stencil.

This is a different stencil, but it shows what the finished article looks like. This is the 'shadow' layer of my Jagdtiger stencil and is made up of two sheets of A3 stuck together.

With the stencil cut out, I place it on the bit of chipboard, pin down the image at the corners and press down the detailed areas of the stencil into contact with the board. The undercoat is still tacky so it holds the paper in place. I spray over the stencil in indigo (because my black has run out), carefully peel the stencil off and voila.

You can see the strips of paper that I added to the stencil on the shoulders of the band. This helps make the shapes of their bodies distinct and means I don't have to stick on loads of papers clips to hold the faces in place.

"What do you mean paper clips to hold the faces in place?

On the above stencil, the little round and square holes in the middle of the tape are seperated from the rest of the blue background. There are a few ways to achieve this. Firstly, you could make little linking strips like I did on the Entombed stencil. However, linking strips would have made this stencil look pretty lame, so instead I bent some paper clips to act as links and taped them onto the stencil. The paperclips are raised away from the paper, so you can't see them when you spray the stencil. Using paper clips like that can be pretty fiddly and I generally try to avoid doing it. The pipboy image on See You Tomorrow made heavy use of linking paper clips because there were so many unbroken lines.

Another way to avoid unsightly link lines is to just colour in the links afterwards with a marker, but I consider this to be cheating.

I make most of my stencils out of paper because it's easy to cut out and allows for more detailed stencils. Thicker paper or card hold up to repeated use better. Thin, low GSM papers tend to soak up paint and go all wrinkly and warped. For my initials stencil, which I obviously have to re-use frequently, I printed the image on photographic paper, which is very thick, but is pretty expensive, so wouldn't really be suitable for ordinary stencils.

I don't derive all my stencils from photographs of course. For my initials stencils I have sometimes drawn it out first in Paint, or cut drawn it directly onto the card. For the Dwarf stencil I drew out the image in paint before splitting it into halves on Photoshop and printing.

Drying

Spray paint is touch dry within a few minutes depending on what surface you're spraying onto and how humid the air is. A harder, less aborbant surface such as laminated card or paint will take longer to dry and be more prone to smudging. To speed drying you could use a hair dryer. I use a paint stripper thing which I hold two or three feet away from the surface. A hair dryer would work well too. If I held it closer I could burn or singe the paint. This could be a neat deliberate effect of course, but one I haven't used yet.

After this, the paint usually takes a few hours to fully dry and harden off, prior to this, it's pretty easy to scuff the paint whilst it is still soft.

I don't have to tell you why you need to take care not to hold the *paint stripper* too close to the surface do I?
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Surfaces

I've listed a few surfaces, each with their pros and cons.

Card/cardboard - Such as from cereal boxes. Very absorbant, colours come out dim and muffled. Warps easily due to absorbancy. I wouldn't use this for anything other than practicing.

MDF - Very absorbant, colours come out dim and blurred edges seem to occur more easily if spraying straight onto MDF without using a background colour or primer (see: IDDQD3). Can be quite thick and heavy requiring strong picture wires. Otherwise, makes a nice smooth surface and is easy/cheap to get hold of.

Chipboard - Very absorbant, has a very textured surface which just makes images look noisy. Tends to be thick and heavy. There are numerous superior materials to use than this.

Plywood - Moderately absorbant. May have a nice wood veneer finish. Colours come out very bold and edges sharp. Has the best balance of colour vibrancy, clarity and drying time. Tends to be thinner which makes the finished articles lighter and more friendly to hanging up on the wall. You can buy it in several thicknesses, I can't see why you'd want anything thicker than about 3mm really unless you're planning a really big stencil, larger than 3 or 4 feet. Wickes sell plywood in 6' by 2' boards, though bizarrely it's sold by the square metre. This is one of my favourite materials to use for stencils.

Wood - Moderately absorbant, depends on if it's been treated really. Similar to plywood except tends to be thicker, making hanging up more difficult. Has nice grain patterns and may have knots which might tickle your fancy. Wood stencils look good hung up on walls, I like the fact that found pieces of wood, like what I used on Knife or Plague Doctor don't require a basecoat and have a certain amount of character to begin with.

Acrylic Painting Boards - These are the things you can pick up from staionery shops. It has a faux-canvas texture and is about twice the thickness of cereal box cardboard. Not particularly absorbant, so doesn't stand up well to multiple layers. Drying time can be quite long. Tends to warp and bend after spraying. A nice clean surface is pretty much guaranteed however, with a reasonably nice texture and it's easy to get hold of. Nice and light for easy hanging up. Good for practicing on.

Stretched Canvas - This stuff is very expensive but is also a pretty classy surface to work on. Naturally, I only got hold of some stretched canvas because I saw it going cheap in Lidl. The canvases I got were stretched onto wooden frames and were already primed with white paint (I don't know if this is something you'd expect as standard), which means they're ready to rock straight away and provide a nice even surface for doing basecoats. The surface of the canvas is quite tactile and looks really classy when it's all covered in paint.

From my (limited) experience, canvas has its drawbacks. The textured surface can make getting an even coverage difficult, particularly if you're spraying from an angle. The surface of the canvas is quite delicate and easily punctured or dented which makes it quite fragile, it is also very springy and this can make it tricky to get a good contact with the stencil. A basecoat would preclude the use of aggressive masking tape, which could lift some of the basecoat away, so a way around this would be some art tape or something, which naturally I don't have. Whilst on wood you can secure stencils in place with drawing pins, which leave only fairly unnoticeable marks on a basecoat, on canvas you'd be left with rather unsightly holes everywhere. In conclusion, it's expensive and somewhat difficult to work with, but is a more highly esteemed material to hang on a wall than a bit of crappy wood that smells of garage.

Varnished wood/Metal etc - Not very absorbant at all, I'm guessing these are an absolute nightmare to work with and thus haven't bothered.

That's all I can think of for now, cheerio.

Extar, over, out.

79. If someone is especialy brutal say "HAIL MOTHERFUCKER"