development of final stencils

I have decided that I need to make these shapes instead of live tracing them. The edges of live tracing architectural features are coming out too textured and too rough. I got lucky with the previous stencil ideas that I created.  I am going to create the patterns by tracing the architectural features myself with the pen tool .Only this way will I get a stencil that I am completely happy with. I can fully control the design of the stencil using this process.

I do not want symmetrical perfect symbols as this would create a corporate image, instead I want quite a free flowing set of stencils that have broken lines and odd unsymmetrical shapes. 

This is starting to look much stronger now as a stencil idea.  

Through deleting one of the sides I have created a much more abstract shape that is unrecognizable as a pillar. Now, the shape looks like a stencil that is ready to be used to make printed imagery onto the building. 

With this one that I have already made and put into a design, I actually don’t think it is too bad. It has not got too man sharp edges and corners and is rather abstract. However, I will remake it so that I can make all of the lines smooth and make a stencil that is easier to create and use. I need to remember that this stencil will be actually used, therefore I also need to make sure that it can be used as a stencil. 

I am experimenting with a few places to get a pattern from this building. I am experimenting with different ways of highlighting the shapes without being overly obvious about what they are. I particularly like it when I am just looking at the shadow of the textures and patterns, and so this is what I am going to focus on when exploring stencil ideas. 

This stencil I have created is pretty powerful. There is a subtle depth of field, trickery with perspective which I quite like. 

Again, I am tracing around shadows of the building, however this one is not going as successfully. 

This is the pattern of the top of one of the roofs. I quite like it, and I think that to turn this into a stencil, I am going to take the drop shadow of the circle centers and the background sky to make the solid colour of the stencil, and the actual brick I will make the negative space. 

This hasn’t worked so well. I think that the shapes need to be isolated, and not be contained in a squared off background. Therefore I am going to try other areas of this image to vector. 

I am really struggling with this shape. The problem is that I cant create a shape with circles cut out of the centre because then it is not a stencil that works, the middles will fall out. I need to rethink it, so I am going to move onto another stencil design and come back to it. 

I am quite excited by the prospect of making a stencil out of this one. It  should be quite fun to make and it is a bold shape this is going to stand out. 

This is my first attempt at the shape. I have done it so that the x is not immediately obvious, and just highlighted the shadows. It think it is fairly effective  and when the texture is applied so that it looks like it has been applied to a wall surface, I think it will look most effective, but I am also going to try it where I have the whole shapes in the image rather than just the pattern, as I can delete areas of the stencil when I create the textured wall patterns. 

This is much more successful, it is bolder and more confidently produced. It will make an interesting wall pattern. I will apply a heavy grain on this image when creating patterns. 

This is another really nice simple pattern that I have found. I am going to do a similar thing to what I have done with the previous stencil idea, however this time I am going to make the stencil out of the light areas, this way I wont be creating shapes with holes in the center that will fall out. 

This is a successful stencil. Its bold and striking and should look great when I put it on a building as a pattern. Also, the rough edges and almost childlike construction of line reflects my concept well. 

This is a pattern on a medieval building. It is quite stereotypical of historical building pattern and is something that I was thinking about staying away from, as I want the stencils that I create to have a quirky and fresh feel to them. However, after looking at this, I think that if I inverted it so that the stencils were made out of the white zones then I would have a stencil that was a little bit different but still reflective of this building surface design. 

I quite like how it is not straight and parallel  and that the corners have slight curves. Again I believe that this is going to make a very interesting pattern when I come to designing final building surface patterns.

This pattern is also quite interesting. The stencil here is pretty much done for me. I just need to turn the black areas into a vector shape. 

These are the 3 patterns that I have got from this, but I think I need to neaten up the shapes before I use them and call them a final stencil idea. Either that, or I just focus upon one shape.

I have decided upon one shape that I will use as a final stencil. It is very simple, but on a large scale I think it could work. 

It is fairly obvious what I need to do here to make a stencil out of this pattern. I am going to trace over the centres of these bricks, and then the pattern that is created above the brickwork that is highlighted by the sky I will also turn into a vectored shape. Then I will see if I need to do anything with the brick that is underneath. 

I have done that idea, and I think that it definitely needs the lower part, or it needs more of the top part of the stencil. I will try both ideas. 

After playing about with both ideas, I have decided that this is the successful design, as the others either look too obviously like the original pattern, or the line underneath actually looked like a face. 

So, now I have a set of final stencils. I am going to start using these final stencils and turn them into patterns that could be created by the artists who I propose should use these.