Painting on wood with foil stencils - A first experiment
The front of the university library building in Münster, Germany, is decorated with a sculpture. In huge letters, it says “GEHORCHE KEINEM” (Obey no one). The artist explained that the sculpture is meant as a message to the users of the library: to use the information they obtain critically, ask questions and be ready to change their perspectives on topics.
The sculpture forces the visitor to literally change their perspective, because it is very large and installed on a corner of the building, so you must change your perspective to see the whole sentence.
I like both the message and the way the sculpture forces the viewer to change his perspective to fully see it. I am also a former student of the University of Münster and wanted something to remind me of my time there. I thought reproducing this sculpture in some way was a good idea. I have some boxy furniture I will paint the lettering on. This way I can make the furniture more interesting, and by painting the words on the edge of the furniture I also get the perspective effect.
But before I can do that, I want to experiment with how I can paint the lettering on my furniture. I own a Silhouette Cameo 4 Vinyl Cutting Machine, so I opted to cut a stencil out of foil and try that out. I started with some Oramask 810S, but that was a nightmare to cut and didn’t properly stick to the wood. After that, I went back to the foil I use for making vinyl stickers, Oracal 631. I cut the foil and transferred a first test piece onto some wood, and it adhered properly to it.
To test the whole workflow, I got a new piece of wood, similar to my furniture, and first sanded it up to 240 Grid Sandpaper. After that I transferred my stencil to the wood and masked off the surrounding area with masking tape. I sprayed on a first layer of clear coat, because I read that this prevents paint bleed around the edges of the stencil. After the first layer dried, I applied two more layers of red paint. After everything had dried, I pulled off the stencil.
For a first experiment I believe the results are good, but there is a lot of paint bleed in the direction of the wood grain. For the next experiment, I think I will first coat the wood with primer and maybe even a complete first layer of clear coat before using the stencil.
