Create a t-shirt stencil design

Stencils are an ideal way to get designs transferred onto awkward, uneven surfaces and communicating punchy imagery for everyone to see and enjoy. These templates have been a mainstay of street artwork for years, but you can use the same principles to transfer your design onto fabric, especially t-shirts. In fact, applying a multicolour stencil is not all that different a technique to how artwork has traditionally been created for various methods of mechanical colour reproduction, such as screenprinting.

In this tutorial, we'll look at how to create a three-colour design using FreeHand and its versatile tools, ready to be made into stencils. From there, we will show you practical steps and tips to making your stencils before finally spraying onto a t-shirt. This will show you how easy it is to create stencil artwork and inspire you to use it further, explore its qualities and try it out in other ways.

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The Creative Bloq team is made up of a group of design fans, and has changed and evolved since Creative Bloq began back in 2012. The current website team consists of eight full-time members of staff: Editor Georgia Coggan, Deputy Editor Rosie Hilder, Ecommerce Editor Beren Neale, Senior News Editor Daniel Piper, Editor, Digital Art and 3D Ian Dean, Tech Reviews Editor Erlingur Einarsson and Ecommerce Writer Beth Nicholls and Staff Writer Natalie Fear, as well as a roster of freelancers from around the world. The 3D World and ImagineFX magazine teams also pitch in, ensuring that content from 3D World and ImagineFX is represented on Creative Bloq. 

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