Happy Holidays!

News:

Ryan of Qwantz.com and I raised almost 650 dollars Canadian for Childs Play with our Ebay auctions. Thanks so much to everyone who bid on the paintings!

Also,

The Torontoist ran a very nice article on Sticanada!

So this week will be the long-awaited “Tutorial” theme week. During this theme week I will take you through my process, step by step. Please keep in mind that this is just my process and not the process. Something else may work better for you. My process is very cheap and accessible, however. The most expensive item I use is the projector, but If you skip the projector and draw it by hand, (you know, like an artist.) you can buy everything else you need (Knife, paper, pen, and paint) for about 5 bucks. You can get these items easily almost anywhere.

Step One!


Find an image you like

Step Two!

Project it with an opaque projector.

Opaque projectors are about 50 bucks, last forever, and are extremely useful.

This model is a good little workhorse:

Trace out the outline and any details you can make out. Use a decent marker. Pay attention to areas of light and dark. Don’t worry if you can’t see much detail, because you can always add more in later by hand when the lights go up.

I use Bristol Board, AKA Poster Board, AKA the stuff you can buy at any stationary store or dollar store for about 50 cents a sheet, or “two-fer” a dollar. If you want to make a really big stencil, just tape several sheets of Bristol board together. Use packing tape or masking tape. Both should be at least an inch wide for strength. Packing tape is cheaper and easier to cut through later, but marker will rub off of it, so you’d usually want to use it on the reverse side of the paper. The advantage of Masking tape is that it will take ink, so you can tape the front, thus, you can project first and add sheets to cover the image- making a custom sized stencil easily. This stencil is a 3×3 grid of Bristol Board, with little additions for overflow. I used packing tape on the back, with little pieces of packing tape on the areas where the sheets overlap, for a little added strength.

You don’t need to make a grid, but If your paper is taped out in a regular grid, it will fold down and store nicely. you can also leave a slight gap of tape between the sheets to give them space to fold nice and flat, but don’t stress too much about this. If you want to go all out, you can put tape on both sides to make a wider, stronger gap.

Tomorrow- Step Three!