What is "stencil"

Stencil \Sten"cil\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Stenciledor Stencilled; p. pr. & vb. n. Stenciling or Stencilling.] To mark, paint, or color in figures with stencils; to form or print by means of a stencil.

Stencil \Sten"cil\, n. [Probably from OF. estincelle spangle, spark, F. ['e]tincelle spark, L. scintilla. See Scintillate, and cf. Tinsel.] A thin plate of metal, leather, or other material, used in painting, marking, etc. The pattern is cut out of the plate, which is then laid flat on the surface to be marked, and the color brushed over it. Called also stencil plate.

1707, not recorded again until 1848, probably from Middle English stencellen "decorate with bright colors," from Middle French estenceler "cover with sparkles or stars, powder with color," from estencele "spark, spangle" (Modern French étincelle), from Vulgar Latin *stincilla, metathesis of Latin scintilla "spark" (see scintilla).

"to produce a design with a stencil," 1861, from stencil (n.). Related: Stenciled; stenciling (1781 as a verbal noun).

n. 1 A utensil that contains a perforated sheet through which ink can be forced to create a printed pattern onto a surface. 2 A typeface looking as if made by the utensil.^{Stencil (typeface)} vb. (context transitive intransitive English) To print with a stencil.

1. n. device that has a sheet perforated with printing through which ink or paint can pass to create a printed pattern

2. v. mark or print with a stencil

3. [also: stencilling, stencilled]

Stencilling produces an image or pattern by applying pigment to a surface over an intermediate object with designed gaps in it which create the pattern or image by only allowing the pigment to reach some parts of the surface. The stencil is both the resulting image or pattern and the intermediate object; the context in which stencil is used makes clear which meaning is intended. In practice, the (object) stencil is usually a thin sheet of material, such as paper, plastic, wood or metal, with letters or a design cut from it, used to produce the letters or design on an underlying surface by applying pigment through the cut-out holes in the material.

The key advantage of a stencil is that it can be reused to repeatedly and rapidly produce the same letters or design. Although aerosol or painting stencils can be made for one-time use, typically they are made with the intention of being reused. To be reusable, they must remain intact after a design is produced and the stencil is removed from the work surface. With some designs, this is done by connecting stencil islands (sections of material that are inside cut-out "holes" in the stencil) to other parts of the stencil with bridges (narrow sections of material that are not cut out).

Stencil technique in visual art is also referred to as pochoir. A related technique (which has found applicability in some surrealist compositions) is aerography, in which spray-painting is done around a three-dimensional object to create a negative of the object instead of a positive of a stencil design. This technique was used in cave paintings dating to 10,000 BC, where human hands were used in painting hand print outlines among paintings of animals and other objects. The artist sprayed pigment around his hand by using a hollow bone, blown by mouth to direct a stream of pigment.

Screen printing also uses a stencil process, as does mimeography. The masters from which mimeographed pages are printed are often called "stencils". Stencils can be made with one or many colour layers using different techniques, with most stencils designed to be applied as solid colours. During screen printing and mimeography the images for stenciling are broken down into color layers. Multiple layers of stencils are used on the same surface to produce multi-colored images.

Stencil refers to two typefaces released with in months of each other in 1937. The face created by R. Hunter Middleton for Ludlow was advertised in June, while Gerry Powell's version for American Type Founders appeared one month later. Both fonts consist of only capital letters with rounded edges and thick main strokes, much like a Clarendon typeface, except with breaks in the face to give it the appearance of the stenciled alphabets used on boxes and crates. Powell's exploration of Stencil became very popular over time and is still used today.

A stencil is a template used to draw or paint identical letters, symbols, shapes, or patterns every time it is used. The design produced by such a template is also called a stencil.

It may also refer to:

• Stencil buffer, used in 3D computer graphics
• Stencil code, a class of algorithms
• Stencil graffiti, stencils used in street art
• Stencil (numerical analysis)
• Stencil (typeface), a font

In mathematics, especially the areas of numerical analysis concentrating on the numerical solution of partial differential equations, a stencil is a geometric arrangement of a nodal group that relate to the point of interest by using a numerical approximation routine. Stencils are the basis for many algorithms to numerically solve partial differential equations (PDE). Two examples of stencils are the five-point stencil and the Crank–Nicolson method stencil.

Stencils are classified into two categories: compact and non-compact, the difference being the layers from the point of interest that are also used for calculation.

In the notation used for one-dimensional stencils n-1, n, n+1 indicate the time steps where timestep n and n-1 have known solutions and time step n+1 is to be calculated. The spatial location of finite volumes used in the calculation are indicated by j-1, j and j+1.