Stencilling produces an image or pattern on a surface by applying pigment to a surface through an intermediate object, with designed holes in the intermediate object. The holes allow the pigment to reach only some parts of the surface creating the design. The stencil is both the resulting image or pattern and the intermediate object; the context in which stencil is used makes clear which meaning is intended. In practice, the (object) stencil is usually a thin sheet of material, such as paper, plastic, wood or metal, with lettering or a design cut from it, used to produce the letters or design on an underlying surface by applying pigment through the cut-out holes in the material.
The key advantage of a stencil is that it can be reused to repeatedly and rapidly produce the same letters or design. Although aerosol paint or painting stencils can be made for one-time use, typically they are made with the intention of being reused. To be reusable, they must remain intact after a design is produced and the stencil is removed from the work surface. With some designs, this is done by connecting stencil islands (sections of material that are inside cut-out "holes" in the stencil) to other parts of the stencil with bridges (narrow sections of material that are not cut out).
Stencil technique in visual art is also referred to as pochoir. A related technique (which has found applicability in some surrealist compositions) is aerography, in which spray-painting is done around a three-dimensional object to create a negative of the object instead of a positive of a stencil design. This technique was used in cave paintings dating to 10,000 BC, where human hands were used in painting handprint outlines among paintings of animals and other objects. The artist sprayed pigment around his hand by using a hollow bone, blown by mouth to direct a stream of pigment.
Screen printing also uses a stencil process, as does mimeography. The masters from which mimeographed pages are printed are often called "stencils". Stencils can be made with one or many colour layers using different techniques, with most stencils designed to be applied as solid colours. During screen printing and mimeography, the images for stenciling are broken down into color layers. Multiple layers of stencils are used on the same surface to produce multi-colored images.
History
Hand stencils, made by blowing pigment over a hand held against a wall, are found from over 35,000 years ago in Asia and Europe, and later prehistoric dates in other continents.
[ "The minimum age for (the outline of the hand) is 39,900 years old, which makes it the oldest hand stencil in the world," said Dr Aubert. "Next to it is, and this is one of the oldest figurative depictions in the world, if not the oldest one," he told BBC News. There are also paintings in the caves that are around 27,000 years old, which means that the inhabitants were painting for at least 13,000 years."][ Abstract: "... minimum ages of 40.8 thousand years for a red disk, 37.3 thousand years for a hand stencil, and 35.6 thousand years for a claviform-like symbol".] After that stenciling has been used as a historic
painting technique on all kinds of materials.
Stencils may have been used to color cloth for a very long time; the technique probably reached its peak of sophistication in
Katazome and other techniques used on silks for clothes during the
Edo period in Japan. In Europe, from about 1450 they were commonly used to color old master prints printed in black and white, usually
.
[Mayor, Hyatt A., Prints and People, Metropolitan Museum of Art/Princeton, 1971, no. 51, 65, 80, ] This was especially the case with playing-cards, which continued to be colored by stencil long after most other subjects for prints were left in black and white.
[Mayor, Hyatt A., Prints and People, Metropolitan Museum of Art/Princeton, 1971, no. 15, ] Stencils were used for mass publications, as the type did not have to be hand-written.
Book illustration
Stencils were popular as a method of book illustration, and for that purpose, the technique was at its height of popularity in France during the 1920s when André Marty, Jean Saudé and many other studios in Paris specialized in the technique. Low wages contributed to the popularity of the highly labor-intensive process.
[Jan Juffermans (2003). Kees van Dongen: The Graphic Work Lund Humphries Publishers, ] When stencils are used in this way they are often called "pochoir".
In the pochoir process, a print with the outlines of the design was produced, and a series of stencils were used through which areas of color were applied by hand to the page. To produce detail, a
collotype could be produced which the colors were then stenciled over.
[David Pankow (1997). Tempting the palette. ] Pochoir was frequently used to create prints of intense color and is most often associated with
Art Nouveau and
Art Deco design.
[ The University of Cincinnati The Art of the Pochoir Book, University of Cincinnati][ Smithsonian Institution Vibrant Visions, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Library]
Aerosol stencils
Aerosol stencils have many practical applications and the stencil concept is used frequently in industrial, commercial, artistic, residential and recreational settings, as well as by the military, government and infrastructure management. A template is used to create an outline of the image. Stencils templates can be made from any material which will hold its form, ranging from plain paper, cardboard, plastic sheets, metals, and wood.
Official use
Stencils are frequently used by official organizations, including the military, utility companies, and governments, to quickly and clearly label objects,
, and locations. Stencils for an official application can be customized, or purchased as individual letters, numbers, and symbols. This allows the user to arrange words, phrases and other labels from one set of templates, unique to the item being labeled. When objects are labeled using a single template alphabet, it makes it easier to identify their affiliation or source.
Stencil graffiti
Stencils have also become popular for
street art, less for
graffiti, since stencil art using
aerosol paint can be produced quickly, cheaply and easily repeatable.
[Ulrich Blanché: Instant Public Art. A Street Art History of Stencil Graffiti, Heidelberg 2025, p. 16-17.] These qualities are important for graffiti and street artists where graffiti is illegal or quasi-legal, depending on the city and stenciling surface. The extensive lettering possible with stencils makes it especially attractive to political artists. For example, the
anarcho-punk band
Crass used stencils of
anti-war,
anarchism,
feminism and
consumerism messages in a long-term graffiti campaign around the London Underground system and on advertising billboards from 1977 onwards.
[Ulrich Blanché: Instant Public Art. A Street Art History of Stencil Graffiti, Heidelberg 2025, p. 254-270.] There has been a semi-recent trend in making multi-layered stencils with different shades of grey for each layer creating a more detailed stenciled image.
[ Crass Discography (Christ's Reality Asylum) Retrieved on November 11, 2007.] Also well known for their use of stencil graffiti are
Alex Vallauri,
John Fekner, Blek le Rat, Epsylon Point, Marie Rouffet, Nuklé-art, Kim Prisu, Miss Tic and Jef Aérosol from France, British artist
Banksy,
Tavar Zawacki f.k.a. 'ABOVE',
Shepard Fairey's OBEY, and Pirate & Acid from Hollywood, California.
Home stenciling
A common tradition for stencils is in
home decorating and
Handicraft. Home decor stencils are an important part of the DIY (Do It Yourself) industry. There are prefabricated stencil templates available for home decoration projects from hardware stores, arts & crafts stores and through the internet. Stencils are usually applied in the home with a paint or roller brush along wall borders and as trim. They can also be applied with a painted sponge for a textured effect.
Stencil templates can be purchased or constructed individually. Typically they are constructed of flexible plastics, including acetate, mylar, and vinyl. Stencils can be used as children's toys.
Military stenciling
Stencils have been used in the military across most nations for many years and continue to be used today. They are used to mark up equipment, vehicles, rations, signposts, helmets, etc. One use of military stencils was the application of playing card designs to USA Airborne helmets during World War Two as a method to identify regimental units.
Silk screening
Silk screening is a type of printing on paper or
, in which an ink is embedded in the cloth. The ink is controlled through the use of a stencil, which is placed directly over the paper or textile. This process can only handle one color of ink at a time. Therefore, multi-colored designs must be silk screened several times, with each interval taking time to dry.
Micro- and nanostencil
Stencils are also used in micro- and
nanotechnology, as miniature shadow masks through which material can be deposited, etched or ions implanted onto a substrate. These stencils are usually made out of thin (100-500 nm) low-stress
Silicon nitride (SiN) in which apertures are defined by various lithographic techniques (e. g. electron beam,
photolithography).
Stencil lithography has unique advantages compared to other patterning techniques: it does not require spinning of a uniform layer of resist (therefore patterns can be created on 3D topographies) and it does not involve any heat or chemical treatment of the substrate (like baking, developing and removing the resist). Thus it allows a wide range of substrates (e.g. flexible, surface-treated) and materials (e. g. organics) to be used.
The three-dimensional shape of a structure deposited using a micro- or nano-stencil can be predicted by modelling.[S. Arscott "On evaporation via an inclined rotating circular lift-off shadow or stencil mask" J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 37, 011602 (2019). .] This has been experimentally verified.[D. Eschimese et al "Size and shape control of a variety of metallic nanostructures using tilted, rotating evaporation and lithographic lift-off techniques" Sci. Rep. B 9, 7682 (2019). .]
Other stencil forms
Screen printing
A stencil technique is employed in
screen printing which uses a tightly woven mesh screen coated in a thin layer of emulsion to reproduce the original image. As the stencil is attached to the screen, a contiguous template is not necessary.
Airbrushing
A stencil used in
airbrushing called a
frisket is pressed directly on the artwork. It can be used to control or contain overspray, create sharp or complex shapes, but is not designed to be used more than once.
Wall stencils
Wall stencils - to decorate
and
or create your own repeat for an overall modern wall pattern effect.
Rock art
One form of
pictograph found in ancient and traditional
is created by the hand first being placed against the panel, with dry paint then being blown onto it through a tube, in a process that is akin to air-brush or spray-painting. The resulting image is a negative print of the hand, and is sometimes described as a "stencil" in Australian archaeology.
Miniature rock art of the stencilled variety at a rock shelter known as Yilbilinji, in the Limmen National Park in the Northern Territory, is one of only three known examples of such art. Usually stencilled art is life-size, using body parts as the stencil, but the 17 images of designs of human figures, , animals such as and long-necked turtles, wavy lines and geometric shapes are very rare. Found in 2017 by , the only other recorded examples are at Nielson's Creek in New South Wales and at Kisar Island in Indonesia. It is thought that the designs may have been created by stencils fashioned out of beeswax.
See also
External links
