Tag: color separation

  • gradient background introduces jagged or speckled artifacts in stencil

    What to do when your Stencil is Grainy, Speckled, or has too much Detail

    Color separation is the process of reducing a full-color image to just a few colors. Having just a few colors is part of what makes a stencil look unique. Your original image usually has millions of colors in it, and when you reduce a rainbow of colors in a detailed image down to just four…

  • when to use traditional versus halftone cmyk stencil

    When To Use a Halftone CMYK Stencil versus a Traditional Stencil

    Halftone stencils are fun to make and paint, and they are surprisingly versatile for reproducing images that traditional stencils often can’t reproduce. This article is all about knowing when to use a halftone stencil versus a traditional stencil. As you’ll see, sometimes you have a choice between the two and just need to weigh the…

  • sean combs choice a or b

    How Much Detail Should I Include in my Stencils?

    You’ve got the portrait about right, but you can’t really see that dimple in the shadow of his face. How much detail does a stencil need to include? In the end it comes down to taste. But there are some aesthetic and some practical considerations. I like the graphic look of a stencil. I like…

  • stencil of tomatoes in greyscale

    Stencils Don’t Have Color…Only Paint Has Color

    True or false: stencils have color. False! The paint has the color, not the stencil. I painted three stencils each of which was color separated in a different way on baystencil.com. I painted a tomato, a captain america and a telephone to show you how the color separation affects how you finally use the stencil…

  • fashion model in black dress

    What subjects make good stencils?

    What subjects make good stencils, and which ones don’t? Let’s put a pin in a list of bad / good and then talk through some examples. Bad subjects clouds landscapes artistically blurred photos black dogs rainbows and other gradients (unless the rainbows are cartoon rainbows, like this one) overexposed or underexposed shots loose group shots…