Stencil

“ Stencil units are usually large, offering good opportunities for Subordination (page 23) , Symmetry, and Proportion (page 28) . A unit must not only be complete in itself but must harmonize with itself in Repetition (pp. 36, 66) . Stencils may be cut upon thick manila paper which is then coated with shellac; or upon oiled paper. If stencil brushes cannot be obtained one may use a common, round, house-painter's brush, wound with string to within an inch of the end.
Colors may be,—oil thinned with turpentine; dyes; or dry colors ground on a slab with water and mucilage. ”

“ A stencil is a pattern cut out of a thin sheet of some stiff material, applied smoothly to the surface to be decorated, the parts of said surface left uncovered by the cut-out pattern being then painted over with the desired color.
These stencils can be cut out from sheet brass, zinc, thin wood or cardboard. The metal is preferable for small patterns, as it is more durable, and less liable to absorb the paint. They can be cut out with a fret saw, or a sharp knife. When made from cardboard it is a good plan to use two thin sheets, pasted together with strong paste. ”

“ Always remember to space out any part of your work which is conspicuous, so that the stencil seems to just fit in the space as though it were cut specially for it. I find it a good plan to have some pins handy, and just tap in a couple, one at each end of the stencil, to keep it from shifting while you rub on the colour. ”

“ One of the arts of successful stencil cutting is to make the "ties" form part of the design, and by a little management this can be done. I don't wish to point to my own work more than to say{189} you can learn the method of stencil cutting by referring to the designs I have given to illustrate the subject.
Peacock-feather border. The complete impression is given at 2, and requires the plates 2A and 2B to produce it.
"Ties" which are left to merely strengthen a design, and which therefore do not help the effect, can be put in with a brush while the colour is wet if it be thought desirable. ”

“ Slide a new piece of blotter paper under the curtain to absorb the extra moisture, then tack the stencil down with rather small pins. Drive a pin in the centre of each flower, at the point of each petal and at the point of each leaf, between the petals and between the leaves, also in every bridge and along the edges of the design wherever the paper is inclined to lift (Fig. 641) . In short, your endeavor must be to keep the stencil perfectly flat on the cloth so that the dye will not penetrate beyond the openings and blur the outlines. ”

“ Though they may be as wide as one desires, it is seldom wise to make them [110] much narrower than one eighth of an inch, as they are easily broken; and, unless carefully pinned down when stencilling, the paint is liable to run under them and ruin the work. In a block print design no connection of the light or separation of the dark parts has to be considered. In the illustration of the stencil observe that the dark and light are reversed as compared with the stencilled pattern—i. e., the dark represents the stencil paper, the light the openings through which the paint is applied. ”

“ Stencil Paper (Oiled) .—Thick strong paper used for cutting stencils for decorators. Manilla or other papers of good strength and substance are soaked in linseed oil, and sometimes varnished on one side.
Stencil Papers (Waxed) are used in connection with cyclostyle, mimeograph and similar machines. Thin, strong, unsized papers are coated with wax, and a stencil is actually made by removing the wax in various ways. ”

“ If you shift the stencil before you have knocked out the impression you will not get a sharp result.
Having tinted your white to the desired tone spread a little of the colour on to your palette and knock your stencil brush on to this colour a few times, so that the brush takes up some of the colour, then begin by gently knocking the brush on to the wood over the cut-out portions until you have completely covered them with colour. Don’t try to do this too quickly. Proceed gently, getting the colour out of your brush by degrees, and take up the colour from the palette in the same gentle manner. ”

“ When she had done as many stars as there were openings on the pattern she took out the pins and moved the stencil along so that the holes came over a fresh piece of material, making sure that the space between the first new star and the last old one was the same as that between the stars on the stencil.
"How can we boys apply that?" asked James.
"You can stencil on anything that you would decorate with painting," said Ethel Brown.
"Your jig-saw disks, Tom. Stencil a small conventional pattern on each one—a star or a triangle." ”

“ A stencil is a piece of heavy paper or thin sheet of metal in which letters or a design are cut through with broken lines, and it is used for marking the letters or design on any smooth surface by daubing a color on it through the open spaces with a brush or sponge. ”

“ The ground should be smoothly laid on in the desired color, and allowed to become perfectly dry. Then fasten your stencil flat on the wall, in the desired place. It must lie perfectly close to the wall as otherwise the color may run underneath and thus destroy the outline. Paint over the stencil with the color prepared for the design, and, having carefully removed the stencil, wipe any superfluous color off it, and arrange it for the next division of the pattern. Leaves may be easily formed into graceful designs for borders for a wall. ”

“ The art of stencilling is in getting sharp, clean impressions, and this can only come of care and taking time. On no account get the colour too thin. It should be of such a consistency as will enable you to knock it out of the brush with slight exertion. If too stodgy thin it with a drop or two of turps and linseed oil, and then mix with palette knife, but on no account get turps into the stencil brush or you will get very bad impressions, for the colour is sure then to run under the stencil. ”

“ There was a shout from around the table.
"Never mind, Thomas," soothed Roger, patting his friend on the shoulder. "Confession is good for the soul. A stencil, my son, is a thin sheet of something—pasteboard, [199] the girls use—with a pattern cut out of it. You lay the stencil down on a piece of cloth or canvas or board or whatever you want to decorate, and you scrub color on all the part of the material that shows through."
"Methinks I see a great light," replied Tom, slapping his forehead. "When you lift the stencil there is your pattern done in color." ”

“ The colors, if oil, are mixed with a great deal of turpentine, but water colors should be applied “stiff.” Next the stencil is held firmly against the fabric to be lettered or decorated, and quickly but neatly painted over, care being taken that the stencil pattern does not slip and rub the design, and that part of the fabric appearing through the stencil each time is thus stamped. The design can be repeated on the fabric at will and in any arrangement the window trimmer sees fit. ”

“ Fasten the pencil drawing securely to the stencil paper along one edge, slip a piece of carbon paper between the two, and trace the design.
Cutting the Stencil.—Before cutting the stencil for the curtain a beginner should do a little practising upon an extra piece of the paper. Trace a portion of the design upon this piece, lay it upon a sheet of glass or very hard wood, and with a sharp penknife cut along the outline of the pattern. The knife should be held at a slight angle and the cut made completely through the paper. ”

“ The reason for this caution is that if you take up too much colour at a time in your brush and knock it violently on the stencil plate, you will find when you lift up the same that the impression, instead of being sharp will be blobby at the edges through the colour having worked under the stencil. ”

“ If the reader has been able to follow this necessarily brief description, he will readily perceive how, by the use of duplicate stencils, constructed of .any tough substance, the work of engraving, once an art in itself, becomes merely a mechanical process. As the result of experiments, now nearly completed, a form of rubber ink has been devised which, when laid on paper, converts it into a stencil, sufficiently tough to resist the action of the blast. ”

“ Those who are too conscientious to execute stencilling on a wall, or to use moulds for leather-work, would 151 do well to first consider whether they know enough to design a really good or admirable stencil, or an excellent mould, for it is in the genius which originates and executes, not in the mere means, tools, and materials employed, that art consists. ”

“ The edges of the pattern should be clear cut. It may be necessary sometimes to leave small bits of the pattern uncut, so as to hold the design in place. When the paint has been applied, these bits will appear as blemishes, and must be carefully painted in by hand. This process of stencilling can be applied to many uses. Tiles and plates can be very prettily decorated in mineral colors, and the stencilled patterns can be afterward touched up by hand. When a pattern is to be repeated a great many times, a stencil saves much labor, and insures a greater degree of uniformity. ”

“ There are many ways of using this method, some of which partake very largely of artistic effect; indeed a thoroughly good stencil pattern may reproduce the best instances of design, and in the hands of a skilful workman who knows how to graduate and vary contrasting or harmonising tints it becomes a very artistic method and deserves a place of high honour in the art of decoration. ”

“ The one unchangeable element is the white tie-lines of the pattern. For the rest, no little skill is required of the artist in devising and cutting his stencil. The number of plates is limited, but the mode adopted of colouring by hand admits of such variations that no two specimens from the identical stencil plates would ever be alike. Mr. Dick's fan is provided with enamelled sticks in keeping with the other parts of the decoration. Mr. Cook's design is the less characteristic of this particular method. ”

“ He should then mix the stain into a stiff paste or to the consistency of a distemper used for ordinary stenciling; place a portion of this mixture on a smooth piece of wood, take up a very small quantity of it on a stencil brush and apply through the stencil plate in the same way he would a distemper. If a very dark shade is required apply more stain before removing the stencil plate.
PAINTING BRICK.
Objections: Chipping of the brick, and scaling of the paint.
The chipping may be on account of defective brick or otherwise.
Scaling may be caused by poor paint, or by dampness in the brick. ”

“ In the cyclostyle, paper of a special kind is stretched over a smooth metal plate, and the writing instrument consists of a holder having at the end a small wheel provided with a serrated edge on its periphery, which perforates the paper with lines of minute cuts and thus forms a stencil. When ink is passed over this stencil with a roller it goes through the perforations and leaves an impression on a piece of paper placed underneath. ”

“ The edge of the knife may not be so much injured, but the point may at any moment slip into one of the scratches, and that simple deviation from the direction in which it was intended it should have gone would not improbably ruin an early completed stencil-plate.
It is, again, a frequent mistake to make a stencil on too stout a paper. The strength of paper does not depend upon its stoutness, a closely woven thin paper often possesses greater tenacity than much more bulky specimens. Heavy drawing paper may be used for almost every purpose. ”

“ A decorator if asked to imitate in stain on white wood a piece of parquetry or inlaid wood, might reply that such a thing was impossible, alleging as a reason that by employing liquid stain in the same way as a distemper—that is to say, by the aid of a stencil to reproduce the pattern—the stain, as soon as it became absorbed would be found to “run,” and so giving to the pattern imitated an indistinct or blurred edge. ”

“ The stencilling material was made of ultramarine blue. When these plates were painted with some of the special paints, and exposed, the stimulative nature of the ultramarine blue began to assert itself, and within a short time, wherever the stencil marks were located, signs of rust began to appear through the coatings of top paint which had been applied. ”

“ In ceramics the stencil is produced by coating the biscuit with a preparation which prevents the transfer-paper or enamelling from adhering to the surface at those parts where the original colour of the biscuit is to be preserved. According to Skeat (Etym. Dict., 1910) the word stands for an earlier stinsel, and is to be derived from Old French estinceller, to sparkle, to powder with stars, an old term in heraldry, from Latin scintilla, a spark. ”

“ Until within the last few years the printing of cards was generally done by stencilling, the colour being applied through perforated devices in a stencil-plate. The colour employed for this purpose is mixed up with a kind of paste. When there is a device at the back, the outline of the device is printed from an engraved wood-block, and the rest filled in by stencilling. The stencilling of the front and back can be done either before or after the pasting of the sheets into cardboard. One great improvement in the manufacture has been the substitution of oil colour for paste or size colour ”