182 
KERAMIC STUDIO 
®3 
229 
KM 
STENCILLING 
Albert W. Heckman. 
OME of the first things that come to one's 
mind in planning a design are, what is it 
to be used for and what is to be the me- 
dium of expression. It is generally con- 
ceded that the kind of a design that one 
makes must be consistent with the me- 
dium of expression and must be kept 
within the legitimate limits of the par- 
ticular craft in hand. Therefore, in planning a design for 
a stencil, as we shall do in this instance, we want primarily 
to make a design that has fine quality as a stencil design, 
and, at the same time, to make one which will "cut" prop- 
erly. 
First of all let us consider the source of the design or 
the motif we shall use. This question comes up with each 
new problem. Whence shall we get a motif suitable to the 
making of a stencil design? Anywhere, save from the 
ready-made stencils on the market. One of our ever present 
problems is, how are we to develop our capacity for creative 
skill, and, were we to buy a ready-made stencil, no matter 
how many times we would apply it, we would defeat our 
own interests. Select a motif from your sketch book, from 
your files of Keramic Studio or take a flower drawing, as 
the writer did in this case (see figure 4) and see what you 
can do with it. Take a bottle of Higgins Ink and a brush 
that is not too small and make "stencil interpretations" of 
it, as you might say, beginning with something very simple 
(see figure 5 and figure 6) bearing in mind all the while 
that the black areas are to be cut out. Figure 7 illustrates 
one of these so-called interpretations made from a flower 
drawing and carried a step or two further than in figures 
5 and 6. 
You will soon find that the success you have both tech- 
nically and artistically depends upon a careful and thought- 
ful use of the "ties", or those parts of the paper that hold 
the design together. Avoid as much as possible the use of 
"ties" which serve merely as "ties". Make them play an 
important part in the design itself, for you will find that 
in the most successful stencils they always do this. Char- 
coal, too, is an excellent medium to use in planning a design 
of this kind, for here you can "mass in" the whole design 
and then, with the aid of an eraser, you can take out all 
the lines or spaces which correspond to the "ties". After 
you have made several variations of the motif, plan the 
Figure 2 
pattern, or the manner in which you want to repeat the 
motif. See figure 8. (Ties are portions of the background 
which hold the stencil sheet together.) 
Perhaps after planning your design in dark and light 
and then in color, you find some places where you want to 
place one color over another. To do this it is necessary to 
make and use more than one stencil. For instance, figure 
3 illustrates a textile which was made with the use of two 
stencils, figures 1 and 2 respectively. After the design was 
planned on paper a stencil, as illustrated in figure 1, was 
cut and then another which registers with it exactly, as il- 
lustrated in figure 2, was made. Four colors were used in 
this design and stencil No. 1 was applied first — the large 
fruit-like form was put in with ultramarine blue, the next 
largest form was put in with alizarine crimson and the 
remaining opens were stencilled in with emerald green. 
After this was quite dry the other stencil was applied and 
the leaves were stencilled in ivory black and the small dots 
in emerald green . 
Figure 1 
