Stenciling 101

Lesson 4: Stenciling Situations

Final Project - Small Mural

This "hole in the wall" is a small mural in itself. To complete this project you will actually be creating most of the "stencils" yourself. It will also give you some practice using a mask. The ivy is the only commercial stencil you need - and actually, you can skip that if you don't have an ivy stencil handy. To do it you will need the following:

• a sheet of newspaper or a paper grocery bag
• quilters tape
• a cut out the size and shape of a brick to use as a mask
• a pencil
• optional: you can use a ready made brick stencil if you can find one easily instead of using the template and tape.
• grey paint to simulate grout
• red, brown and terra cotta paint to do the brick
• a small sea sponge (or substitute a wadded up piece of fabric.)
• a thin fine-line artists brush and white stencil paint or an opaque white paint pen.
• fine line black permanent felt tip marker.
• Optional Ivy stencil
• dark green permanent felt tip marker

Instructions

1. Take the sheet of newspaper or bag and tear a good sized hole out of it. Make sure it is odd shaped with uneven edges. Save the inside piece to use as a mask.
2. Tape this firmly to the wall.
3. Take gray paint and cover the surface inside the torn space.
4. Take your brick template and a pencil and start marking off brick shapes. Make sure to stagger them. Also make sure that you begin outside on the bag itself so that you will get the illusion that they are behind the "hole." Alternately, tape up your brick stencil.
5. When you have filled the hole with brick shapes, cover your pencil lines with the quilter's tape.
6. Taking your sponge or wadded up rag, dab the red and terra cotta colors into the hole. Cover the space completely. Add a bit of brown in spots, but only lightly. You can also dab on a bit of the grey used for grout.
7. Remove the masking tape.
8. Take the mask left from tearing a hole in the paper and place it slightly to the left and above the actual hole. Stencil this with darker grey paint. Now move it to expose the remaining two edges and stencil with a lighter grey.
9. For added realism, stencil just below each brick with the darker grey to create the impression of a recess under each brick. NOTE: For a better view of the hole, that will allow you to see the shading more accurately, click here.
10. Determine where you light source is and use the darker grey to create a shadow on the appropriate side of each brick.Note: You will probably want to add a bit of shading and highlighting to all sides to add depth. For this additional work, go ahead and discard the mask. It is normal for some "grout to remain on the bricks with a hole like this.
11. Using the black marker, draw some "cracks" radiating out from the hole you painted. Take a thin artists's brush or an opaque white paint pen and draw a matching line next to it where the highlight would be.
12. If you are adding the ivy, first replace the hole so that you can stencil some ivy that is "outside" attached to the brick. Aim it toward an especially prominent crack.
13. Now position the ivy stencil so that a stem emerges from the painted crack and continue stenciling some ivy on the wall. Shade and highlight as needed.
14. If your ivy is a single overlay, use the green marker to draw in some leaf veins, at least on the larger leaves.
15. Try to create a drop shadow with your ivy by moving the stencil in the direction where a shadown would logically fall depending on where you determined your light source to be.

VARIATION Use the same technique for creating the hole, but this time sponge in sky and clouds through the opening, as though we were looking through the wall to the outside. It can be fun to stencil a bird's nest with baby birds in the opening, or a tree branch.

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