How to Stencil

Ron's second visit of this HouseCalls episode took him to the suburban community of Cary, North Carolina. There, Ron Hazelton visited the home of Tony Caldwell who had big plans for decorating the walls of her daughter's room. Before they took their paintbrushes to the walls, they chose to begin with a lesson. Their teacher was a friend of Ron's and an accomplished stencil artist, Janet Phelps.

Click Here For a list of what you will need in order to complete this project.

1. The brush stroke lesson:

• They began their lesson by pouring out dollops of artist's acrylic paint. Then, Janet showed them the basic brush strokes on regular paper.

• When you load your brush with paint, you must always wipe it off again so that you don't overload your brush and the paint runs down underneath the stencil.

• The first stroke Janet demonstrated was the circle stroke. Holding her brush perpendicular to the surface being stenciled, she used small circular strokes, leaving a very smooth finish.

• Second, she demonstrated was the stipple stroke. Here she held the brush straight up and down and simply gave a gentle dabbing motion with the tip of the brush.
• The third stroke you will need is the brushing stroke. Start at the edge of the stencil and brush inward to avoid pushing paint under the stencil.

2. The stencils:

• The secret to creating a convincing, life-like wall painting, is the precisely cut, thin, plastic stencil.
• Each painting used in this demonstration required a set of three or four stencils called overlays. After securing the first stencil into position with masking tape, the paint is applied. After that stencil is removed, a second overlay is taped in position by lining up the small dots called registration marks, in the corner of each stencil.

• After the second stencil is used, it is then replaced with overlay number three, again taking special care to line up the registration marks. This process is continued until all of the stencils in the series have been used.

• Each overlay uses a different paint color. Plastic stencil sets like the ones used for this project cost between $10 and $200. They can be used on many different surfaces including walls, mirrors, frames and accessories.

3. Shadowing:

• If there is a challenging part to stenciling, it is the shadowing. To create dimension to the finished painting, Janet demonstrated how to use an angled brush to create a shadow down the side of the image.

• Shadowing takes a steady hand, but when it is done correctly, it can add dimension and quality to the painting.
• A variety of final touches can also be added the stenciled work. In addition to shadowing, Ron painted in some grass below the feet of the goose that he painted with very pleasing results.