Stenciling

stenciling, in the visual arts, a technique for reproducing designs by passing ink or paint over holes cut in cardboard or metal onto the surface to be decorated. Stencils were known in China as early as the 8th century, and Eskimo in Baffin Island were making prints from stencils cut in sealskins before their contact with Western civilization. In the 20th century stencils are used for such diverse purposes as making mimeographs and fine paintings. The Pop-art paintings of the 20th-century American artist Roy Lichtenstein, for example, simulated the dots characteristic of the halftone process of comic-book illustrations by painting over evenly distributed perforations in a thin sheet of metal.

Pochoir (French: “stencil”), as distinguished from ordinary stenciling, is a highly refined technique of making fine limited editions of stencil prints. It is often called hand colouring, or hand illustration. The 20th-century artists Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró made prints in this technique for book illustrations. More important was Henri Matisse’s use of stencil prints, notably in Jazz (1947), his illustrated book with handwritten text.

The major disadvantage of the stencil method is that, although any open design can easily be cut in a stencil, a design enclosing another is impracticable because the middle design drops out. This can be dealt with by using two overlapping half designs. If all parts of the stencil are held together with a web of threads, however, greater freedom will result. A silk screen or a fine wire mesh that permits colour to pass except where the screen is coated, or “stopped,” with glue or a similar substance is generally used for this purpose. When applied to mass-produced commercial products, such as fabrics, this process is called silk screen. When an artist designs, makes, and prints his own stencil to produce a fine print, it is called screenprinting (formerly serigraphy), and the product is called a screenprint.

Several methods may be used to obtain a stencil on a screen mesh. In one method, called the blockout-, or glue-cutout-, stencil method, those parts of the screen that are to be stopped are filled with water-soluble glue. Lines could be reserved in these parts by drawing with lithographic tusche (a greasy ink) or crayon, which could later be washed out of the glue with turpentine. Water-based inks are now more common. Another method, called the film-stencil method, employs stencils cut from a thin sheet of coloured lacquer laminated to a sheet of glassine paper. The design is cut only through the lacquer layer, and the finished stencil is fixed to the underside of the screen. The glassine paper is then removed from the stencil, and the design is printed. Photographic transfers both in line and halftone can also be fixed to the screen with a light-sensitive emulsion, which is exposed to light through a drawing or a film positive. This method is primarily a reproductive technique, because no original designing is actually done on the screen. American painters including Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and Larry Rivers, however, have used photographic screens in their works.

Screenprinting is done with a liquid ink that is forced through the open screen by the sharp rubber blade of a squeegee. Since most of the inks used for this purpose are opaque, the reproduction of gouache (opaque watercolours) is almost perfect. Transparent colours can also be used, as can water-based colours through screens stopped with plastic or polymer.

Screenprinting began to be used for noncommercial purposes in 1938, when a group of American artists working with the Federal Art Project experimented with the technique and subsequently formed the National Serigraph Society to promote its use. Serigraphy, more commonly known in the 21st century as screenprinting, was developed by a number of painters—in France by Victor Vasarely, in Great Britain by Eduardo Paolozzi and Bridget Riley, and in the United States by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.