Favorite Artists: Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Favorite Artists: Stencils of Amy Sherald and Jean-Michel Basquiat

Stencils

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Amy Sherald

Creating a High Contrast Stencil

Step 1: Take a high contrast photo. There should be shapes that are really light highlights and shapes that are really dark shadows.

Step 2: Trace the shapes that you want to cut out

Step 3: Prepare your background (if you need to.)

Step 4: Cut out your shapes.

Step 5: Spray or paint in the stencil shapes.

Stencil Self-Portrait

Highlights: Find the lightest areas of an image and cut them out.

Spray or brush the light color in the highlight shapes.

Shadows: Find the darkest values in an image. It helped me to draw over them with a black marker.

Cut dark shadows out.

Line up your image with the first stencil color. Spray or brush through the stencil. 

Now you have an image with highlights, mid-tones, and shadows. I think my mid-tones are a bit dark here, so it's not as successful as it could be.

This is from a session I went to at the NAEA Convention in March called "Tag It" A Unit on Graffiti and Stencil Street Art by Deborah Huff. Nasco has published this lesson plan as well.