Madness of Mission 6 stencils

[yamatetsu]

FALSE is doing a cab based on 'The Madness of Mission 6' art.





I suggested doing the side artwork in stencils, and, because I really like the ghosts, decided to do a smaller version myself.


1st attempt.

20 x 30 cm.

- used the protective vinyl cover on a piece of plexi for masking

- printed the pic, doubletaped it onto the backside of the plexi

- used a scalpel to cut out the ghosts, removed the vinyl that covered the ghosts

- spraypainted the ghosts

- removed the rest of the vinyl

- painted the backside of the plexi black using a roller






As you can see, using the plexi's vinyl for masking doesn't work too well.



2nd attempt.

42 x 60 cm.

- used proper masking vinyl, covered the entire piece of plexi with it, lots of air bubbles

- printed the pic, doubletaped it onto the backside of the plexi, cut the ghosts out

- removed the vinyl that covered the ghosts, spraypainted the ghosts

- removed the rest of the vinyl, the stuff left A LOT of glue residue

- decided that I didn't want to take the time to remove the stuff, aborted attempt #2


Interlude

I wanted to use thin white cardboard for masking. Cut the cardboard, thought that this looked way too good to waste it, and just doubletaped it to black cardboard. Looks pretty good. For the fun of it, I put the white cardboard on a piece of sheet metal. Looks great, but the ghosts would both have the same color.



This bigger version made me realize that vectorizing the ghost faces makes them look kinda goofy. Vectorizing them by hand also didn't work, so in the end I just cut out the original faces and used those.
I also thought that the yellow ghost's face doesn't look mean enough, so I did a face swap.


3rd attempt.

42 x 60 cm.

- tried to make my own vinyl stickers by sticking opaque vinyl used to protect books onto doubletape vinyl

- printed the pic, doubletaped it onto the vinyl

- rollerpainted the backside of a piece of plexi black

- used a scalpel to cut out the pieces of the ghosts, basically creating stickers

- put the stickers on the front of the plexi

- the stickers don't stick too well, the colors are not bright enough






4th attempt.

20 x 30 cm.

Same as attempt #1, this time I used proper masking vinyl and spraypainted everything. The ghost's colors bled through the black.






Final attempt.

42 x 60 cm.

- decided to use cardboard

- cut the ghosts out of the black cardboard using a scalpel

- cut out the blue ghost's shape out of blue cardboard

- cut the red ghost's shape out of red cardboard

- taped the red and the blue cardboard on the back of the black cardboard

- doubletaped the pic on a piece of scrap MDF

- I wanted to cover the pic with plexi. Used black edge banding to glue the plexi to the MDF.







This came out well, I think. As usual, the pics don't do it justice because of the reflections. Now I just have to find a really dark place to hang this up to minimize those.

[Mike A]

I suggested doing the side artwork in stencils, and, because I really like the ghosts, decided to do a smaller version myself.

I thought that was me. 

If you are going to do simple artwork like that you should stencil it with paint instead of printing it on vinyl. That would be sweet. I am not implying any negative connotation with my use of the word "simple". I think it would look badass painted.

[opt2not]

I suggested doing the side artwork in stencils, and, because I really like the ghosts, decided to do a smaller version myself.

I thought that was me. 

If you are going to do simple artwork like that you should stencil it with paint instead of printing it on vinyl. That would be sweet. I am not implying any negative connotation with my use of the word "simple". I think it would look badass painted.

Yeah, Mike A suggested it early in FALSE's thread.


As for material, when I stenciled my Canuck's logo onto my cocktail project, I used just regular printer paper. I initially vectored the image, printed it, cut-out the shapes with a scalpel/x-acto knife, taped the paper down along the edges and weighed down by stacks of pennies. No adhesive fuss...but it requires you to lay your cabinet on it's back to do it this way:





Then I repeated the process for the other colour and did some touch-ups with a fine brush.  The results were great.

[Mike A]

Yamatetsu, those ghosts make cool stencils. Nice.

OPT

The stencil work on your cocktail is cool. Even if it isn't the Blackhawks.

[yamatetsu]

I suggested doing the side artwork in stencils, and, because I really like the ghosts, decided to do a smaller version myself.

I thought that was me. 

If you are going to do simple artwork like that you should stencil it with paint instead of printing it on vinyl. That would be sweet. I am not implying any negative connotation with my use of the word "simple". I think it would look badass painted.

By golly, you are right. I must have overlooked your post back then, I posted 'my idea' a day later.

@opt2not: Normally, I use frog tape to mask the whole area off, then cut out the ghosts and use a roller to paint them. This time I only used scrap materials I had lying around, so no frog tape and no paint. Time for experimenting. The 4th attempt would probably have been perfect if I just had done a second coat of black. If there is a next time, I will definitely do that.
I think your way of doing this without adhesive stuff wouldn't work with stencils that are very detailed and small. On a pic that is 20 x 30 cm, the ghosts are less than 10 cm tall, which makes for some very intricate cutting. You simply can't tape the paper down at the edges, because of the weird shapes and because some of them are very small.

I will definitely keep your method in mind though if I ever have to do a simple stencil.

[opt2not]

I vaguely remember reading somewhere about doing stencils using higher quality print paper and a spray can of light adhesive glue. Print the paper, cut out the images, spray the back with light adhesive and let it sit to get tacky, then apply to the surface. From what I remember reading, the light adhesive should seal well enough, but still be able to peel off cleanly.
I’ll have to find that page again, but it could be a really effective way of getting clean lines.

[opt2not]

Couldn't find the old article I read years back, but I found another site that mentions using spray adhesives.  "repositional spray adhesive".

https://www.lovelyetc.com/how-to-stencil-anything-3-secrets-to-perfect-results-every-time/

Her tips are pretty good. Though I never used a make-up brush to paint my stencil colours. Next time I do stenciling I'm going to try that!

[Mike A]

Make sure you buy new make-up brushes. You don't want to ruin the ones you use every morning.

[opt2not]

LOL we got jokes!

[yamatetsu]

I vaguely remember reading somewhere about doing stencils using higher quality print paper and a spray can of light adhesive glue. Print the paper, cut out the images, spray the back with light adhesive and let it sit to get tacky, then apply to the surface. From what I remember reading, the light adhesive should seal well enough, but still be able to peel off cleanly.

That sounds good for simple stencils, but won't work for the ghosts because if you cut out out the shapes first, you get multiple parts, some of them quite small, that you'd have to position exactly right on the surface. Hence my approach of sticking everything on the surface first, then cutting the shapes out. For this, spray adhesive might work. It would certainly make cutting the paper easier. Cutting through paper, protective vinyl and a film of adhesive for 2 to 3 hours straight became really painful towards the end.

Couldn't find the old article I read years back, but I found another site that mentions using spray adhesives.  "repositional spray adhesive".

https://www.lovelyetc.com/how-to-stencil-anything-3-secrets-to-perfect-results-every-time/

Her tips are pretty good. Though I never used a make-up brush to paint my stencil colours. Next time I do stenciling I'm going to try that!

Thanks for the link! This is educational. I'll try the spray adhesive if I can hunt down some similar stuff over here. The make-up brush... I think using this probably takes too much patience, especially if doing larger stencils.

[opt2not]

I vaguely remember reading somewhere about doing stencils using higher quality print paper and a spray can of light adhesive glue. Print the paper, cut out the images, spray the back with light adhesive and let it sit to get tacky, then apply to the surface. From what I remember reading, the light adhesive should seal well enough, but still be able to peel off cleanly.

That sounds good for simple stencils, but won't work for the ghosts because if you cut out out the shapes first, you get multiple parts, some of them quite small, that you'd have to position exactly right on the surface. Hence my approach of sticking everything on the surface first, then cutting the shapes out. For this, spray adhesive might work. It would certainly make cutting the paper easier. Cutting through paper, protective vinyl and a film of adhesive for 2 to 3 hours straight became really painful towards the end.

Yeah I believe for this very reason I had those breaks in the lines of the silver paint in my second picture above. The logo had small details in the middle that the stencil had to line up to. Instead of trying to position the “floating” details , I anchored them by connecting those small details to the main shapes. After painting and removing the stencil, I used a fine brush to paint in those disconnecting lines, as seen in my third image.
This idea is similar to having to remove the posts from 3D prints after they’re printed. The “posts” of the stencil helps anchor and position those inner details that would be difficult to stencil by themselves.