been stenciling for around 3 years now , the pizza box is a good tactic indeed although i find when doing large stencils break them up into 3 or 4 parts and if the become wet you can buy sheets of tin foil cut the tin foil at home to exact size of your stencil if needs be scotch tape the tin foil togther and slide over the wet stencil this will not stick but help dry out the paint ,but then again if you guys are any good at stenciling you shouldnt have that much over spray ....

always spray from ateats a 1 foot distance from the card .

a 500ml can of montana,krylon etc should last around 50 a4 sized stencils .

I usually use plastic overhead transparencies to cut out large stencils. I typically will take a picture and edit its contrast in Photoshop and then use Illustrator's pen tool to draw chunks or layers of color before projecting the design onto my wall and using a sharpie to draw on the transparent plastic so that I will know where to cut later. I then use temporary spray adhesive to attach the stencil to the wall. Here is my most recent large piece of a close friend.






[This article was edited 1 times, at last 10.12.2009 at 14:24.]

Nice work. How do you assemble your transparencies? Painters Tape seems to work for me, but I don't like the way it gets saturated with paint.

Id look into a different bottom for your art though, something different than a straight line. After pulling down my stencils I try to fade out the bottom for another 10% or so.

Thanks man! Yeah I intend to do some touch-up work around the edges including fixing the bottom edge. To assemble my stencils I typically use duct tape around the edges. For this stencil (which is my biggest to date), I purchased a large roll of transparent flat plastic instead of using lots and lots of taped together 8.5" x 11" sheets. This unfortunately can get sloppy as the stencil will tend to be hard to stick flat on the wall when it is composed of pasted together sheets. Anyone know how to solve this?

If you want to make your lines extra crisp on the inside of the stencil, tape down a thin layer on the wall you are about to spray on and put the stencil on top of it. Once it is stuck to the tape which is stuck to the wall, you can use your stencil as a guide to cut out the unwanted tape chunks along the lines of your stencil and peeling off the areas that you DO want painted. This prevents paint from slipping under the edges of the stencil. I personally need to learn more about the fundamentals of light and shadow artwork and human anatomy. I need to learn how to draw better in order to further my stenciling abilities. Any suggestions anyone?

I think fading the bottom would look sick. Good call.

Does anyone have further suggestions for producing large stencils cheaply? I am a poor college student and artist! haha.

Best Wishes,

Sean Ludeman

pizza boxes do the job nicely