Ray Dunakin
Registered
I decided I wanted a couple faded, old signs on the side of this building. I searched online for pics of "ghost signs" and other old wall signs, and studied them to get a feel for the lettering styles, layout and weathered appearance... First would be a sign for the bank which originally occupied the structure. I laid out a simple design and printed it onto self-adhesive vinyl. Then I masked the background area and used a stencil brush to stipple in some charcoal black:
When the background had dried, I cut out the lettering from the vinyl and positioned the mask over the background area. Then I stippled in some off-white:
After removing the mask, I touched up the edges of the letters, and painted in some brown spots and tints. Here's the completed sign:
This simple sign had turned out well, so now I was ready to try something a little more complicated. The next sign would be an old ad, in several colors. I worked up a design I liked and printed out two copies onto self-adhesive vinyl:
Then I cut a mask for the entire background and stippled on a thin, spotty coat of off-white. When this dried, I masked the border, and positioned the vinyl "tamale" cutout, then painted the background a mottled red color:
Next I cut out the lettering, and laid the vinyl mask over the red background:
The letters were painted off-white, and the tamale was painted in shades of pale yellow and brown:
When the mask was removed, it looked pretty ugly! The rough surface had allowed paint to bleed under the edges of the mask, so there was a lot of touch up needed. I also needed to add the "red hot" lettering to the center of the tamale:
I cut a mask for the "red hot" lettering and painted it. Then I touched up all the edges, hand painted a thin drop shadow on the lettering, and added a black outline around the tamale. Finally, the entire wall was given a very wash of "mortar" colored paint, while the building was laid on its side. This helped to fade out the signs, and also toned down the colors of the stones a bit and very subtly tied the whole thing together:
Here's how it all looks now:
That's all for now...
