Stencils

A stencil is a template, usually in the form of a thin sheet of material, such as paper, plastic, wood or metal, in which a design (pattern,motif, lettering) has been cut so that paint applied to the sheet will reproduce the design on the surface beneath. The stencil is both the resulting design and the template (intermediate object ) by which we draw. 

The great advantage of the stencil drawing technique is that one template can be repeatedly used. The design that we want to draw in stencil technique must be adapted. Since the design is cut out, it must contain closed curves only. A special case is if a design segment is found within an already cut segment. In this case, the cut section (island) is connected by a narrow section of material (bridge) with the segment that is located inside of it. Stencils have been widely used by the military to quickly and clearly label e.g. objects and vehicles, in industrial settings and all shapes and forms of street art... 

In addition, a large number of vector designs suitable for stencil technique can be found in other categories of our site. Pay special attention to the category of Scroll saw patterns, because all the designs in that category can be used for stenciling.

All the stencil designs will be available in universal vector (svg and eps) file formats, as well as in .dwg file format which is the most commonly used 2D CAD file format.

All the stencil designs that you can download here are under Creative Commons licenses. Note: Before downloading a design, check if the license permits either non-commercial (for private use only) or commercial use of the design.