Step 1:

I drew out the design on a piece of 8.5"x 11" paper and then inked over it to really get the boundaries of the design.

Step 2:

I take an Xacto knife and begin cutting out the design to create a stencil.

Step 3:

Once the stencil was cut out, I realized how foolish of me it was to cut out the design on a piece of paper: It isn't strong enough to handle paint, but I didn't have chipboard around. Not letting that deter me, I used push pins to hold the tight edges and corners down onto the shirt.

Step 4:

I took a paint brush and began painting. And problems started happening, but I made the best of it.

Step 5:

The semi-finished product. I took off the paper once I was done painting and to my dismay some of the paint bled through the paper (duh) so I have to go back and "manually" fix the smudged edges. C+ for my first time trying this technique, I'll work on perfecting it over the winter break.

The advantage this technique gives is that it saves a lot of painting time and the edges come out sharper and neater than a purely hand-painted shirt. It took me maybe 10 minutes tops to apply paint. Most of the time was spent drawing out the design, then inking it, then cutting out as neatly as I possibly could before applying paint. In contrast, straight painting is a little more rough around the edges and has a more "artistic" look and feel once it's completed. I still prefer straight painting, for now, because I can put much more colors on a shirt simultaneously, as opposed to a stencil which is similar to screen printing where you can only apply one color at a time and basically have to layer. All in all, it was a fun process. Maybe I'll get into graffiti...