Triple Layer 8 Ball Graffiti Stencil

All this focus on stenciling has kept me off the bottle this week. But I have gone green once again. Its just been a bit painful slipping back into reality this time. Every time I go back to Indo and then return to China it feels like I am in boarding school again. I would always dread going home when I was in school but once I spent a week at home I would be miserable back in school. I think this is some sort of normal human condition, one of the fucked up elements in our programming. So sticking with my schedule, I decided to attempt a 3 layer stencil. Its not as complex as the one I am aiming to do but it is an image I just came across and I thought it might look cool on my wall.


It is a relativity simple image. So I went through the drill on Photoshop creating a cutout I could work with.



I could have cut out the whole fire area and made it like a big red blaze with the 8 ball inside it, but I decided to just do the outline of the fire instead. I was not sure if the red would just end up looking like a big blob or not. And I could always change from here, but if I went for the big fire there would be no looking back.



On the second layer I cut out the whole 8 ball. Simple enough...


For the 3rd layer I used the cut out of the 8 ball from layer 2. I ran out of the sticky paper I have been using. So I cut out the white areas on the ball for the number and the shine. But being so small I had to add DVD stuff around the whole thing to buffer the spray. I have never used so much scotch tape as I have in the past 3 days.


I threw down the outline first, in red paint. Once it was up I thought it might look better in a full fireball instead of just the outline. But I just left it the way it was. I am finding the red paint tends to bleed a bit more than the others.



The second layer was the black cue ball. Very standard. As you can see I used a little post it to insure my stencils were all perfectly lined up.


The 3rd layer was kind of tricky. I did not know of I wanted to use the ID logo in the center of the cue ball or put a number. But right before I was about to paint I saw a cut out of a star that was wastage from another stencil I was working on so I cut some tiny pieces of tape and fixed the star into the center of the black ball. It looked pretty phat.


And there it is. My fourth stencil. I still wonder if it would look better on a full fireball instead of just the outline. I might change the stencil and give it a try. I need to find a place where I can put these puppies to more use.