Painting Stencils

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I originally learned this method when I was painting hood numbers on my

WW2 jeep. Ray Cowdery teaches this basic method in his book All American
Wonder, Vol 1 and All-American Wonder, Vol. 2.
1. Create the artwork for your stencil either by hand drawing it or better
yet, use Adobe Illustrator or other software to trace the stencil in the
original texture map. Print the stencil artwork onto card stock.
2. Lay down overlapping strips of blue painters tape on the glass from an
unused picture frame. I find it's helpful to fold under one edge of the
tape. This makes it easier to peel the stencil off the glass when you're
ready to paint.
3. Spray the back of the stencil with spray adhesive such as 3M 77 Super
Multipurpose Adhesive.
4. Place the stencil onto the blue painters tape.
5. Cut out the stencil.
6. Carefully peel the tape/card stock off the glass & affix it to your prop.
7. I would recommend painting stencils with either Testors Acryl, Testors
Enamel, or spray paint. In this example, you can see that I used a very
stiff brush & dabbed the paint onto the prop, giving it the look of a
stencil applied with an old school stencil brush.
Note: I would recommend that you DON'T use the acrylic paints from Wal-mart/Hobby Lobby. They don't have enough pigment in the
paint, so you'll end up having to paint multiple coats. This will give you blurry stencils.

Anya Stroud Belt Panel

This is the stencil for the back plate on Anya Stroud's belt. This was
created the same way as the stencils above. This one is a bit more
complex. Since there's not a handy edge to lift, we had to use an
Xacto knife to lift the stencil off the glass. Be very careful when
lifting webbing like what attaches the eyes to the skull.
The outer rectangle was placed on the armor piece first, then the
circle/skull was added. After that, we masked off the rest of the
armor piece with blue painter's tape & paper.
We used a spray can of white paint so that this one would have good
coverage & sharp edges.

4/15/2016 3:01 AM

Painting Stencils

2 of 2

http://www.hardscrabblefarm.com/costuming/painting-stencils.html

Here's the finished stencil. The grunge wash has been applied to the
piece, but we have not drybrushed it yet.

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contributor is noted, please credit them too. Basically, if you want to swipe my stuff, I know I can't stop you...or it would be costly, time consuming, and definitely NOT fun to try.

4/15/2016 3:01 AM