HD Stencils
2012 - Ongoing - Spray paint on various material.

High Definition Stencils is a graffiti technique invented by Paolo Cirio for spray-paint reproductions of pictures and graphics. HD Stencils make use of custom-made software and laser cutters for making stencils with a high level of detail through tiny cut-out holes of any geometrical shape. Like subtractive color printing, HD Stencils have the ability to reproduce full color pictures with four stencils for each color channel (CMYB). These stencils can be used on a range of surfaces, from small pieces of paper and canvas to big walls of buildings. The stencils are digitally generated by a simple script coded in Processing, which converts bitmap images in special vector files that can be printed with laser cutter machines. This technique requires a specific process for the preparation of the images for the script, its configuration with manual settings, and the use of the resulting stencils to ultimately create graffiti. The artist released the code and the instructions for his technique with an open source license to give everyone the opportunity to learn how to create HD Stencils. Paolo Cirio uses the HD Stencils for conceptual street art pieces that reproduce unauthorized snapshots of influential individuals into graffiti. By using HD Stencils to paint on both walls and paper, the HD Graffiti street art series takes the form of murals and wheat-pasted posters, or fine artworks on canvas and on a variety of materials.
- Overexposed series. 2015.

- Download the software script
- Download technique's instructions

Licence
 The script in Processing as well as the Technique HD Stencils invented and created for this project are released in Open Source with Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially as long as they credit the artist Paolo Cirio and license their new creations under the identical terms.
Pictures of the first prototype - 2012







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