Let’s stencil…Tupac!
In this series we take a stencil and try it out. The first time through, we just kinda paint it the way it comes out of the box. Then we get some ideas, and we modify the stencil sometimes. Or we leave out a layer. Or we paint it on a different colored surface. Anyhow, from what we learn we typically make something better or more interesting the second time around.
First Pass
This is a five-layer stencil. We’re painting on a white surface, so painting the white layer isn’t going to do much.
Learning
There were three things that we saw that we wanted to change:
- The marks where the bridges left white lines–we want to fix that
- the darker the paint, the more noticeable the lines
- The detail around the eyes is lost because of poor contrast
- Something is really popping out on his cheek–looks like somebody left a coin there or something
We like the way the secondary ‘shadow’ appears on the left side of his head (looking from our point of view), and want to keep that. Gives it more dimensionality. Texture of paint on the cap makes it pop. The black layer could stand alone as a single black-on-white stencil.
Second Pass
So we removed a bunch of bridges that weren’t *really* necessary. And then we chose to start with lighter spray for the lightest layer, to improve the contrast handling and give us more range from layer to layer.
Stand-alone stencil from black layer
This often turns out this way: the black layer has enough detail and is high-contrast enough that you can use it all by itself.
