Stenciling like banksy

    I've been playing around with photoshop a bit over the past couple years and have picked up on some fun effects. One I would like to share is how to make stencils for use in spray art or air brushing (The real airbrushing, not computerized). 

First you open up the portrait you would like to paint in photo shop. Crop out your model, or image you choose to paint from the background. I prefer using the magic wand tool. Next, on the top tool bar click on image. Then scroll down to adjustments from the adjustments tool bar find curves. A graph should pop up with a input and output options. Enter around 140 for input and 170 for out put. This should alter the image so that the light areas and dark areas are over emphasized.

    Next go back to the image adjustments bar and choose threshold. In the threshold input box enter around 94 or so. (The number might be very depending on the lighting in the photo, just play around with it until you find your desired effect) 

    From this point you are almost done. Next take your paint brush tool to touch up any blurry spots. Once all your lines look sharp using you paint brush bridge any islands of black so that they are not lost in the stencil cutting process.  At this point you have your stencil ready to print.

    Print your stencil, glue it to some cardboard or tagboard and go to work in it with a razor knife. Upon completing these steps you stencil is complete. All that is left is to line it up on your canvas and spray paint over it using light even strokes. 

    Remove stencil and WOW! you have a life like two color image.  

Note: For best results start the process with a sharp image, that has dramatic light and dark lighting effects.