Printing Patterns with Stencils
Senior 2 · Fine Arts
Printing Patterns with Stencils
Lesson 4 of 5
22 min
Look at a football shirt, a school badge, a bank logo or a shop sign: two colours are often enough. They are cheaper to print than full colour and easy to read from far away. Printing two colours by hand with stencils depends mostly on one skill: making the second colour land exactly where it should. That skill is called registration.
Why light first? A dark colour covers a light one cleanly, but a light colour printed over a dark one is weak or disappears, and wet colours printed together run into mud.
Keza prints six flowers along a border: yellow petals and a dark brown centre and stem. She cuts two stencils with matching triangles, prints the yellow petals six times, and waits 15 minutes for them to dry. Then she prints the brown six times using the same pencil triangles. On one flower the brown centre lands 3 mm to the left, leaving a white crescent on the right. She checks and finds that she lined up only one triangle. Lesson: line up both triangles before dabbing, and give the dark shapes a small overlap.
| Colour | Source | How to prepare it |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Turmeric powder from the market | Stir a teaspoon into a little hot water. |
| Brown | Strong black tea or used coffee grounds | Boil in a little water until very dark; cool and strain. |
| Red-brown | Red soil | Dry it, crush it and sieve it through a cloth into a fine powder; mix with water. |
| White | White clay (kaolin) | Prepare like red soil. |
| Black | Charcoal from the cooking fire | Grind to a fine powder and mix with water. |
| Pink to purple | Beetroot | Grate and squeeze out the juice. It fades in sunlight. |
These colours are too runny for a stencil on their own; they creep under the edges. Thicken them with cassava paste: stir 2 tablespoons of cassava flour into half a cup of cold water, then pour this into a cup of boiling water, stirring until it turns thick and see-through. Let it cool, then stir in your colour until the mix is like thick porridge. Plant colours fade in strong sunlight and washing, so they suit paper and card better than clothes.
Warning
Safety with dyes and colours
Tip
Light first, dark last, dry in between. Put registration marks on every stencil and on the paper, and make the dark shapes a little bigger where they meet the light ones.
Give two reasons for printing the lighter colour first.
Solution: the dark colour then covers any small overlap cleanly, and a light colour printed over dark would be weak or invisible.
What are registration marks and where must they appear?
Solution: small shapes, such as triangles, used to line up the stencils. They must be in exactly the same place on every stencil and on the paper.
A design shows a yellow sun on a blue sky. Plan the stencils and the order of printing.
Solution: stencil 1 has the sun cut out; print it in yellow first. Stencil 2 has the sky cut out, with the sun left as an island held by bridges, or use the cut-out sun as a mask, made 1 to 2 mm smaller so the blue slightly overlaps the yellow. Print the blue when the yellow is dry.
Mutesi mixes turmeric with water only, and her prints bleed under the stencil. What should she change?
Solution: thicken the colour with cooked cassava paste, dab most of the colour off her dabber first, and dab straight down.
Remember
Sources and credits
