Lesson 1: Media for Walls and Hard Surfaces - Beyond the Usual
Spray Paint
Spray paint can make quick work of stenciling and can produce some lovely effects. Once you have mastered the technique of spraying either in a light, continual mist or in short bursts you can shade and contour easily. Spray paint (especially if you buy one of those trigger nozzles that take the pressure off your one finger) is a great way to cover a large area quickly. I used it with a lace curtain that had been tacked to the wall. Spraying a light mist of white spray paint through it left a perfect image of the lace on the dark navy walls that even appeared to have dimension because of the way spray paint tends to fade at the edges.
Spray paints are often used in a technique called projection stenciling where an image is projected onto a large sheet of paper attached to the wall with adhesive. The picture is traced into the paper and the appropriate sections are then cut out and spray painted. While this technique can be amazingly sophisticated and detailed (and somewhat time consuming) it can also be used for simpler projects such as stylized Art Deco pictures, Egyptian cave painting style images or even those designs called "supergraphics" that became so popular in the '60s. All it requires is the image and projector, large sheets of paper, a pencil and craft knife.
The biggest problem with spray paint is overspray. Overspray goes everywhere - not just on the wall but on floors and into the air. You need to mask carefully and cover all surrounding surfaces. Mask off any area of the stencil that is in a different color as well. In fact, if you can surround the area to be stenciled with the bottom of a shallow cardboard box that has been cut out to stencil size you eliminate a lot of problems with overspray.
