I want to trace a large image onto my wall...?

Question

I want to trace a large image onto my wall then color it with highlighter for a black light at my place. The image is a detroit old english D. I can use a font to make the letter but I need advice on printing out a stencil. I'm thinking a program that will let me print one image on several peices of paper? I don't have a projector to use. Any advice?

Answer 1

You can rent overhead prjectors from your library. That's what I did when I did my daughters room.

Answer 2

The grid method is used by professional muralists, so more than likely it is going to be the best option avaiable. If you find it difficult to do because you are proportionately scaling way up, try scanning your reference into a computer and breaking that up into your squares. Scale those up to the point where one square fills a whole sheet of paper once it is printed out. Then use these individual pieces along with the original composite one to work from. I have used an artograph projector before for signs. There are many technical ussues with these that made me go back to grid: If the room is too well lit you cannot see anything; there is a good bit of distortion that is very noticeable for lettering; the projector gets very hot which can damage your original reference; they are not cheap. One note - if you are taking an image from a children's book, do not dismiss copyright issues that you can get tangled up in. Disney is particularly agressive with artists that use their images without permission. If you are painting this mural for a commercial establishment, the chances are increased that you will have problems. I knew an artist who painted Disney characters in a daycare. Disney found out and it sure was not worth the pay the artist got for all the trouble it caused. The daycare even wanted to sue the artist because they claimed that the artist should have told them of the copyright issues involved. Go ahead and ask the children's book publisher for permission. I have found that often they are glad to help. Most of the ones I have worked with gave me persmission without charging a fee when it was a private residence. The fees have been reasonable in commercial establishments which I then passed on in my artist's fee. The really big name ones are the only ones where you have big $$$$$ fees - Disney being one of the most likely to say no or want $$$. Make sure you get the permission in writing - even if it is just an e-mail. If it went to court you would want proof that you did get permission.

Answer 3

Getting down to the basics, take your copy of the "D" to Staples, or Kinkos and enlarge it to the size you want to use. No projector, no science experiments, no guesswork. If the image is larger than the paper will allow on the self serve units, ask about the EXTREMELY large copiers behind the counter at the Staples copy center. You can make it extra large. I use this service all the time for the EXTRA large signs I carve. It's inexpensive and gets the job done. Take home your giant "D" and trace onto the wall. Alternatively, check your printer settings. Can you print a poster size object? Will it be big enough? If not, refer to the first part of this answer. GOOD LUCK

Answer 4

You don't need a projector, just some card stock (kinko's) so your lines are crisp, and your regular printer, and a lamp with the shade taken off of it. It's not that hard to find something that you can suspend the stencil from, you just have to be a little creative. Maybe a clothes hanger about a foot from the lightbulb, with a clothespin holding the cutout in place.Get it where you want it, and the size that you want it, and trace the shadow. You already know what you want, so that means that you can fill in whatever you can't quite get because of shadows.

Answer 5

You can try this.

Make your own projector using a lamp with strong lightings.

Print out the shape of the "D" onto a hard paper, not card, so that you can cut it out with a scissors. Note: Cut the D out, without destroying the edges. we need the "Frame" not the cut out D. you can do this with a curve cutter.

Shine the lamp onto the wall you will be painting on. Make sure it shines evenly and at the right angles to avoid distortion.

ask someone to hold the piece of paper in front of the lamp while you trace it on the wall with pencil or anything you can erase easily if you need to do any changes.

Answer 6

Print it out on a piece of graph paper. Draw the graph with something easily removed, on the wall proportionately larger. then just draw each little square. Or, make a cardboard cutout of the letter, use a lamp to cast the shadow onto the wall and trace that. Like the silhouettes we used to make in grade school.

Answer 7

If you don't have a projector (bummer, woulda been easier), I would suggest calling up your local Kinko's or copy store of your choice, and ask them how much it would cost to make a copy of your "D" at the magnification size that you want. You can then cut the "D" out of the page and use it as a stencil.

An alternative solution, if your font is a vector font, is to magnify the image a ton in the image editor of your choice, and then to slice it up into squares and print out each square. Then reassemble the squares and cut out the "D". This is more of a hassle and is why I would try a professional copy shop first.

Answer 8

Or you can do it with a slide projector or digital projector, or even better yet an overhead projector, if you have access to one. Just display the image you want to trace on the wall, trace it out, and turn off the projector to do your fill-in work.

Remember to use pencil to do the tracing.

Answer 9

You could try to put it in front of a light bulb and see if it makes a shadow on the wall. Or if there's a window on the opposite wall, hang it on there and see if it makes a shadow. But you might just have to freehand it.

Answer 10

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