When you look at old photos of city skylines & street, you’ll probably see a wide variety of signage. I personally think adding signs to buildings is my favorite part of creating and building unique structures.
The greatest part of adding signs to buildings is that transforms it from a plain, drab structure into a landmark that has its own unique personality.
Even better are the options that you have when you’re making or applying signs to your city’s buildings. From small posters to giant, full wall signs that look like they’re painted to the side of the building, or even signs that really are painted onto your structure!
The third is what I’m talking about today. Specifically, the large, full wall section painted signs that typically feature a brand or the business name that spans most if not all of one side of your building.
Yes, yes, I know… I love signs. But I love full-wall-sized signs (or even ghost signs) the most. If I had to explain my love of signs in something comparable I would use ice cream as an example… I love ice cream, but I LOVE rum raisin ice cream. Hand-painted ghost signs are the rum raisin ice cream of signs to me.
Now, these signs do look very cool. And they can loo complicated or tricky to make on your structures. But I assure you, they’re pretty easy to make and here’s where I stop blabbing about my love for inanimate signs and start showing you how I make them!
What you’ll need:
- A structure to put the sign on
- Ruler
- Printer & Paper
- Xacto Knife
- Safety Glasses
- Hand Protection
- Cutting Mat
- Acrylic Paint (I use white and black in this how-to)
- Paint Palette
- Sea Sponge
Start by measuring the area you’re going to put the new hand-painted sign. You’re going to want to make sure your stencil for the lettering is going to fit into the area of your choice. A simple step, but it helps to keep you from printing and reprinting your signs over and over again to get the right fit.
Now we know what size the sign is going to be, we hop on over to our computer and find a font style that fits our era and type of advertisement/business. I try to pick slab or display fonts that are bold and have wide characters which makes the next step go much easier. Once you’re satisfied with your font selection and the verbiage/text of your new stencil-to-be, go ahead and hit the print button on that sucker! You might want to do yourself a favor and print a couple of them just in case you make a mistake when cutting, you can just crumple up the old one and start again.
Time to start cutting the letters out!
Get your stencils fresh off the printer and head on over to your cutting mat. Grab that Xacto knife, your safety glasses and appropriate hand protection. We’re working with sharp tools, be safe and cut smart. We’re going to cut the black lettering out that we printed. If it’s a shape like an ‘O’ or a lowercase ‘e’, or any letter like those that have a shape that’s enclosed where it would get cut-out, we leave a section un-cut so it’s part of the stencil (see photo for example of what I’m trying to say here).
Letters are removed, now we have a stencil and it’s time to paint
The first part of this step is optional and I’ve done it with and without for my buildings. Sometimes I think it goes better with the color scheme of the building and other’s it just wouldn’t look right, so use your own discretion.
(optional part) Paint the area where the lettering is going to go with your black or very dark gray acrylic paint. I used the sea sponge on this and layered it with two colors, black then dark gray. This added a worn look to the paint and makes it look as if it’s been on the structure for a little while.
Once the dark paint dries, or if you didn’t use the dark background technique, it’s time to apply the lettering from the stencil that you just made.
This is done with the sea sponge as well and I like to use a dry brush (dry sponge) technique and dab the paint over the stencil to apply it to the wall. I make sure to use a dry sponge technique so the paint doesn’t run under the stencil or travel through the texture of the wall under the stencil and make the lettering messy.
You can always go back and add more light paint with this technique, but if the sponge is too wet with paint, it will travel past the stencil letters and down into the texture of the wall.
That’s really it!
It’s easy to do and it looks AWESOME when it’s finished. You obviously aren’t going to do this on every building, but it can add that unique touch and personality in your city if you sprinkle it in throughout the scene. It really pops on buildings that stick out above the rest or on odd corners of walls that aren’t covered or are exposed in a large empty area.
