How do I do this: sign painting
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- canoe
I'm not an art school graduate so I've never done this before....
I want to take an old piece of neglected wood, paint it, then put some lettering on it. How do I make huge stencils of letters?
I imagine I would cut them out and trace the letters onto the board.
I've heard of a lot of artists putting their work on a projector and projecting it onto the canvas and then painting. This doesn't seem like an effective way, nor do I want to spend the time drawing the typeface by hand on the board.
Thanks for your help.
- albums0
if you make stencils, you're kind of cheating. it's all about laying out your guidelines, sketching your lettings, outlining them, then filling them in with color a then going back and outlining / accenting with color b
- scarabin0
print your art onto paper. lay a sheet of acetate over it and trace with an x-acto knife. now you have an acetate stencil.
- make sure to tape it all down so it doesn't shift while you cutscarabin
- also, you can spray a bit of spraymount adhesive to the back of your stencil before you put it on your wood. you'll get cleaner edges and your stencil won't blow awayscarabin
- edges and your stencil won't blow awayscarabin
- thanks for sharingcanoe
- prophetone0
exactly, make a stencil, cut it out, trace it, fill it
- albums0
on reread, print vinyl decal negatives to expose what you'd like to paint and act like you're an artisan as you color, trying to stay in the lines.
- e-pill0
check this video... its sign painting on glass. video is ultra amazing.
- canoe0
thanks, so I guess I have to find a printer to print these type at ultra mega size... not so much worried about "how to make a stencil" as I've never printed a 6x4 letter, which is my issue.
- output your giant pdf via rasterbator, scale it up and tape your sheets together w/ packing tapeprophetone
- Thank you!canoe
- in theory you could make the giantest stencil ever with just letter-sized printouts, tape and an exacto...prophetone
- if you want to do 6"x4" letters, your easiest solution will be large format printer/plotter. Taping letter size sounds excruciating.monNom
- ...excruciatingmonNom
- depends on what he's printing... sounds like fun to me thoprophetone
- fresnobob0
if you are only doing 1 of each stencil you would probably be fine with 8.5" x 11" paper and tiling your prints in illustrator. Way, way cheaper that way.
Honestly though, it be much easier to just do the projector thing. If you make a stencil you still have to cut it out. Then line it up, which is gonna be a bitch 'casue you wanna do it so huge. Then paint it on. Might as well skip the cut step and most of the alignment one and go straight to the painting.
- prophetone0
also if you go to kinkos you can get cheap large format printouts in b/w instead of tiling smaller sheets at home and combining 'em, less fuss for a little dough dough
- nothing there is cheap or affordablemonospaced
- go to a mom/pop service thenprophetone
- it's a coupla bux per linear x 4ft wide so could be $20, cheapprophetone
- chris_himself_20
Another option, popular in signmaking is to make your stencil on paper (large print, tiled together, whatever). Then you use a pounce wheel to perforate your lines on the paper, tape in place and then pounce with a cloth bag with chalk in it. Depending on your surface allot of stencils will give you issues with bleeding. Using this method will force you to paint all the lines and result in a authentic looking final product. One shot lettering enamel is the best paint to use, as mentioned above.
- doesnotexist0
cover it in tape and draw on it with an x-acto pulling out the pieces you want painted... paint it (or sandblast it/&c) then remove all tape and enjoy
- FawnDog0
Any print shop that cuts vinyl can help you create the stencil. Avery makes a vinyl for this very application. Create the art in illustrator convert it to curves and send it to your printer. They usually charge by the square foot so I don't imaging it will cost much and they will pre-mask the vinyl for you. You stick it on the wood pull the mask and your ready to paint.
- OSFA0
no, no, no. No stencils.
- bzsaw0
At a previous job at an old sign company... owner in his 70's taught me all kinds of tricks. One way that he did huge letters was to draw them out on white sheets of paper, then put the sheet of paper on a metal surfaced table that's grounded, next use a tool similar to a soldering iron would burn small holes wherever you touched it to the surface of the paper. After you're done you'd tape your paper to the surface of what you want to paint. Then using a bag of chalk dust or charcoal dust you'd dab all around your drawing, remove the paper and you have a light dusting of where your lines need to go. Hand paint them in and then fill.
Done...
- prophetone0
hey canoe, i think it goes without saying you'll be posting the end result when it's completed so we can all review it for you...
- albums0
everything OSFA said
http://www.qbn.com/topics/677785…
- prophetone0
especially if it's stencilled, the greatest solution for this application in the entire history of the world.