Screen Printing & Stenciling
Stencils have a long history and
Bansky
A stencil is a thin sheet of
material, such as paper, plastic, or
metal, with letters or a design cut
from it, used to produce the letters
or design on an underlying
surface by applying pigment
through the cut-out holes in the
material. The key advantage of a
stencil is that it can be reused to
repeatedly and rapidly produce
the same letters or design. The
design produced with a stencil is
also called a stencil.
have many uses. They were
originally invented to decorate cloth
in prehistoric times. In the 1920’s
they were a popular method of
book illustration.
Andy Warhol
Stencils have also become popular
Screen printing also uses a stencil process. This for graffiti, since stencil art using
technique uses a frame holding a woven mesh spray-paint can be produced
which supports the stencil. Stencils can be made quickly and easily. They are also
with one or many colour layers using different frequently used in home decoration
techniques, with most stencils designed to be and arts and crafts as well as
applied as solid colours. During screen printing clothing and textile manufacturing.
the images for stenciling are broken down into
color layers. Multiple layers of stencils are used An artist who uses
on the same surface to produce multi-colored stenciling to create his
images. graffiti work is Banksy.
Credit is generally
given to the artist Andy
Warhol for popularizing
screen printing in the
United States.
The word ‘Simplifying’ means to
make something simpler. It may
make something easier to
understand. Simplification can be
done in many ways. One way to
look at simplification is to reduce
the detail of an object down to the
very basic shapes. Natural forms
keep their main characteristics even
when simplified. Another way to
simplify an object is to focus on one
aspect, such as the light and dark
areas.
Simplifying can give us the
opportunity to experiment with
positive and negative space.
Simplifying Many artists use positive and negative
space as inspiration for their work. These
are often very optical pieces which can
play tricks with our eyes.
Victor Varsarely worked in this way. His
work entitled ‘Zebra’ (Below) is
considered by many to be one of the
earliest examples of Optical Art.
M.C. Escher (Left) is another artist who
has used positive and negative space in
his work.
Positive space is the
easiest to understand.
Generally, it is the
space occupied by the
object. The Negative
Space is the space
around your object. It is
defined by the edges of
the positive space.
Exercise: Draw a cross section of a piece
of fruit on black paper. Cut the shape out
using scissors. You can experiment with the
cut out on different backgrounds to get
positive and negative space.
Cut the shape out further including more
detail. Try different shapes, simplifications
and variations of the fruit.