RATS! BANKSY STENCILLING

Hello and welcome to today’s blog from Ideal Stencils. We all know the work of Banksy- the world famous graffiti artist. He is known for many famous pieces of graffiti stencil art, but one subject that Banksy has been painting for years are Rats. They have been spotted on walls around the world, they represent the underclass, rising up from the underground, plotting in many humorous ways to take power from us humans. We are going to be painting Banksy Doormen Rats stencil, in an easy little stencilling project that will add a piece of Banksy replica graffiti art and humour to your interior wall spaces.

Materials needed for stencilling Banksy rats

• Stencil
• Stencilling brush
• Paint (acrylic or emulsion work great)we used the acrylic paint for this project
• Repositionable spray mount or low tack painters tape
• Polystyrene plate
• kitchen roll (not shown)

Attach your stencil to the wall

Start by spraying a light mist of repositionable spray mount on the back of your stencil. This will allow the Banksy rat stencil to be temporarily adhered to the walls surface whilst you paint it and will also create a seal around the cut out areas of the design helping to stop paint bleeding under the stencil. We like to also use some low tack tape just for good measure.

We decided to trim the bottom off the stencil, so that we could lay it down flat against the skirting board and didn’t have to bend the stencil to paint the bottom part, which is fine and easy to do, but we decided to trim it…personal preference. So we then laid a strip of low tack tape along the skirting board to mask of that area so we didn’t get any paint on it.

Load you stencil brush with paint

Squeeze some of the black acrylic paint out onto the polystyrene paint and swirl your stencilling brush into the paint so that it gets absorbed up into the bristles. Then off load the paint on some kitchen roll, so that your brush does not have to much paint on it. This is IMPORTANT – if you have too much paint on your brush, paint will bleed under the stencil causing blotchy edges.

Stencil using the stippling technique/reduce paint bleed

Using a stippling up and down motion to paint over the cut out areas of the Bansky rat stencil.  TOP TIP – I like to stipple but slightly brush in from the edges of the cut out areas so the paint is getting pushed into the open spaces and not under the stencil. Use light-medium pressure (this will also reduce the risk of paint bleed) and reload your brush when you feel that it is running out of paint. The acrylic paint goes a long way and is thick so the coverage is good. We only needed to do one layer using it. If you use emulsion you may want to do more than one layer as it is not as thick.

Continue until you have painted the whole Banksy rats stencil design. You can then, detach the low tack tape from the wall and peel the stencil off, to reveal your great stencilled results!

Finish off with a red card staircase

In the original Banksy Doormen rat stencil he painted a red strip down to the ground for a red carpet (the rats love to put on a high class event!) So we thought that we could create something similar and create a a red stair case leading up into the hole using a piece of red card that we folded in a concertina to emulate stairs. We used some double sided tape to attach it at the top, every easy and effective.

And there you have it, Banksy rats stencilled in your home. They look really eye catching and effective painted around skirting boards, in little hidden places or at the back of shelving units..anywhere a pesky little rat might get to!

What is you favourite Banksy Rat stencil? Have you stencilled a rat on your wall? If so let us know about it!

Please be sure to check out all our Banksy wall stencils Banksy Stencils
Visit us at Ideal Stencils
Follow us on Facebook
or send us an email – info@idealstencils.co.uk