craftgrrl | (no subject) (Reply)

Sophia Loren -- My first stencil!

I've been wanting to make a stencil for awhile. It probably began when I read the Obeygiant website several months ago, and then of course, seeing it here and on other crafty-type websites reinforced my desire to stencil it up!

So, I finally made one today. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be!

Sophia Loren??

Random, I know. I saw her picture on IMDB yesterday, and I wondered if it might make a neat stencil. Since I've been wanting to make a stencil, I thought I might as well find out.

This is the picture I saw -- see, enough contrast, shadows and light. So I pasted it into Photoshop and did my favorite thing to it -- adjusted the threshold to make it into a two-toned picture (see my self-portrait on the upper left of this page).

Here's what I came up with. I was going to cut out all the black parts, so I had to make sure there were no isolated white islands anywhere (because if I cut out the black, the white islands would fall out, too), so I connected a few spots where there were white islands (you can tell -- I did it on those weird highlights on her hair).

I enlarged the picture because it's a teeny-tiny 72dpi picture, so of course, the enlargement was pixelated. I figured I could make up for it when I cut the picture out. And besides, this is a test.

I printed this picture on cardstock. Then I used an exacto knife to cut out the black parts (I started with the less-important parts and saved the eyes for last, because I figured I could use a little practice before I did those.)

Here's my stencil all cut out (yep, AFTER I already used it). I used a brayer (one of those rolly rubber things you use for printmaking) and spread my black acrylic paint out on some aluminum foil and mixed in some water.

I taped the stencil on a t-shirt and held my breath and started rolling paint over it, carefully trying not to bend those little parts that stick out on the stencil.

It took a bit of paint to get an evenish covering, and it might be better to make a stencil out of something less thick than cardstock... a transparency, maybe?

So here's the stencil close up. I think it looks pretty cool! (Her eyes are still pretty pixelated, but I think it looks neat, anyway).