touristiko

So here we are again, with some kind of a stencil tutorial. For the old version of this tutorial which includes some help on working with iPhoto or doing stencils without using Adobe Illustrator – basically, you having to determine the different shades for your stencil layers yourself – check here.

Righty-ho. For this tutorial, Brett is going to give me a hand. He’s going to be making a stencil from this picture. The key thing here is that he’s taken the picture and it’s a goodie.

Next, the photo has been turned into a black and white with increased contrasts in a program like Photoshop, Picassa or iPhoto. The key thing here is to make sure that you’re able to get good contrasts, especially in key areas such as the face.

Next, the photo has been brought into Illustrator for a live trace, as this makes it easier to pick out the different layers. This is the more technical and, if you ask me, less skilled way of doing it. The harder and more inventive way is done by simply printing this photo above out and then choosing the different layers using your brain… but hey, this is fast and simple and makes it very clear later on. In Illustrator, a Greyscale trace with as many colours as desired layers has been done.

Next, it has been expanded so that the image can be increased to any size without us losing the vector, allowing us to make the printout as large or small as we like.

Now it’s been printed as “Tile Imageable Areas” so that it covers multiple pages. I notice that printing like this doesn’t actually result in the same size image as in Illustrator – it always comes out smaller. If someone knows how to stop this happening, let me know, otherwise just guess until it’s roughly the right size.

Ok, so we’ve printed that out and taped it all together to form a single four paged image.

Next, Brett is cutting his acetate (thin plastic which can usually be bought at art supply stores, framing shops, surveyor stores or even newspaper supply stores… one thing is certain, if it’s not in your local art supply store it’s going to be a pain in the ass to find.) to the size he wants and then just a little bigger to make sure that he is going to cover the entire canvas with his stencil.

Now he’s ready to begin tracing out his layers.

Place dots on the corners of the printout and then on each layer so that it can be properly aligned when it’s being printed later.

If your dog sleeps like this, he is a bad bad bad bad bad bad mean dog.

Now comes the only hard part. This is where the actual colours get cordoned off. Because it’s a stencil, one wants to make islands of the colours which will then be cut out. We have begun with the lightest colour moving to the darkest. So here Brett is drawing out all the light grey islands that he will cut, being careful not to override the white, because the other colours don’t matter as they are darker and will cover the grey. This is hard to explain, but be careful to overlap into the darker colours with these layers – if you only go light grey to the border of a darker colour, there will be all sorts of white lines along those borders when the overlap isn’t printed… it just won’t look clean, and it’s not a good stenciling technique unless that’s what you’re actually going for. As one can see in the photo below, all the medium grey islands are being isolated on the second layer – the first layer has been done, but the technique does not change, all that changes is that now you cannot go overlay any colours except the darkest shade, in this three layer stencil, black (the third layer).

this is why acetate is used – because one can see through it.

moving right along to the third (black) and final layer.

Of course, never forgetting to put in those orientation points on every layer.

Black is the easiest layer because it can just be traced out. It covers everything and it’s easy to see where it needs to go.

So in the end the stencil traceouts should look something like this, one on top of the other.

Now comes the big chore of cutting all this stuff out. Remember, the more effort you put into this, the better it will look. This is always the case. So I’m not going to show Brett cutting this out, nor will I show his bleeding fingers. He used a box cutter, but others use exacto knives. Whatever works.

So we are ready to print this thing. Do not use spraypaint without wearing a protective mask. it’s just not worth it. Gloves are recommended as well. I’ve bought some Montana Gold for this, Belton Molotow is also a really good product if you can get it. Generally cheap spraypaint runs more and results in a spray that may leach under the stencil when it’s being printed, ruining the outcome, so it’s worth it to spend a bit more money and get the real goes-on-thick stuff. We’ve built our own canvases, the tutorial of which you can check out here…

We want a white border on this, so we are using masking tape to tape off the edges. This will also come in handy when we draw on our registration (orientation) marks.

We’ve sprayed spray adhesive (a pressurized glue product) to the back of the stencil, let that dry before placing it onto the canvas, centering it.

The spray adhesive ensures that the stencil won’t move once placed and also that the little flaps of plastic are held down for a cleaner print. Stones or little weights work as well, but are much more finicky than this 12$ bottle of helpfulness. So now the registration marks are being drawn onto the masking tape to guarantee that the stencil is perfectly lined up each time. It is important to cover thes with masking tape once the stencil is properly positioned so that it is reusable – if you don’t cover them, you won’t see them next time, which makes lining up the stencil layers incredibly hard.

Righton. We are lightly spraying the stencil, keeping it even and ensuring it doesn’t leach under the stencil.

Our first layer will look something like this.

Same rules apply for the second layer. Spray adhesive, position, registration marks, spray!

After the second layer:

The Perfectionist at work:

The black and final layer.

Removing the masking tape gave us this! A little problem with the wood under the canvas leading to it being irregular, but better quality wood should reduce this problem.

Ok! Go get’em! If you have questions or comments, please feel free, and don’t forget the old tutorial here…