DIY Stenciling
Cuidado, el toro te ve.
Stenciling first caught my attention in a big way about a year ago, and ever since then I've been quite interested and inspired by that particular art form. There are many artists out there, most of them considered 'street artists,' who use stenciling methods to innovate in very interesting ways. One of the most famous is Banksy, an artist whose work has elevated him to worldwide levels of fame, and is largely seen as the figurehead of this particular style. Here are some examples of his well-known work:
I've always wanted to make stencils of my own and explore this art form for myself-- so I figure as a DIY project I'll give it a shot, albeit on a much smaller scale to begin with.
A highly traditional symbol of the nation of Spain has always been the Bull. I saw this represented in a myriad of ways during my 6 months there, among the most fascinating was the simple silhouette image of the bull that you could see plastered everywhere from bumper stickers to flags, even government buildings. The absolute best usages of it, however, were the giant silhouettes infrequently erected among the plains along the sides of the long stretches of highway:
I thought it would make a great stencil to have for various uses, given my thriving love affair with Spain.
Here's the rundown of my project:
Bought my spraypaint from the UO Bookstore basement-- So many colors to choose from! I just grabbed a can of black for the time being.
This I found at a craft store for about 2 bucks, it's a thin sheet of plastic that is made specifically for stenciling.
I found a good image of el toro and imported it into Illustrator.
I used Live Trace to painlessly convert the image into a vector, which I then changed to a simple outline, so I didn't have to use a massive amount of ink when it came to printing out the image.
This is one small edit I had to make. As you can see, the tail portion of the bull's image contained an "island," which unfortunately we can't have when making stencils. One has to make sure that all parts of the image that are intended to stay solid after cutting have to be connected. As such, I edited the paths a little bit so that there was a small "bridge" between the leg and the tail.
Once my image was corrected, I printed it out to my desired size.
Before I begin cutting, I placed both my printout and my stencil upon a solid backing (the backside of a whiteboard) and taped the two sheets together on all sides to ensure it would not drift at all during cutting.
I started cutting through the plastic stencil material along the lines with my (very dull) x-acto knife. It took a lot more force that I had imagined, making it very hard to stay aligned with the strokes on the printed image.
What I'm discovering is that I'm not cutting all the way through the stencil material in many places, so I'm left with many small spots where the stuff stays stubbornly attached and will require me to go once-over with my knife before removing the inner region.
By now I'm really wishing I had done this on a laser cutter instead.
Finally got the middle part separated.
It seems I was a little bit forceful in removing the middle section, as you can see some parts are sticking up from the flat plane significantly, which will pose a problem when we're spraying over it.
It's time to try this out. I taped it down as firmly as I could to my test surface (a sheet of white paper) to minimize gaps as much as possible.
Sprayed it down with my color of choice, not really paying too much attention to the bleeding on the outer edge of the masking tape.
The results! Not quite perfect, there's an obvious amount of underspray, probably a symptom of sloppy separation of the two parts of the stencil.
I wasn't totally satisfied, so I tried my best to flatten out the stencil by putting it under a stack of really heavy books for about an hour or so before trying it again. It looked a lot flatter when it was done, which I figured would give me a much cleaner spray.
The results of test number two. Much better if you ask me.
Now I'm ready to spray el toro wherever I feel like (that won't get me arrested).
I'd call this DIY project very successful. Though I was expecting the cutting process to be easier, I'm sure it was mostly a matter of having the right equipment in order. What I end up using the bull stencil for I'm not quite sure, but it was more valuable simply as an insight into the process of stenciling itself. I will definitely now be doing this more often with a wider variety of subjects and more complicated techniques; I've got a long ways to go before I'm a Banksy, but this was a very satisfying exercise for what it was.