<p>I believe your method is sound if you take a few trivial precautions during the painting. You can avoid blurred and/or smudged lettering by ensuring the stencil is fastened well to the surface. </p>

<p>Consider to provide additional holes closely spaced to the letters. Applying masking tape through the holes will keep the edges of the stencil tight to the surface, but will not add much to your labor efforts. Obviously, you'll want additional masking (stencil area) well outbound of the lettering and lettering support holes, to keep overspray clear of the background.</p>

<p>The material you use for your stencil will be important too. Avoid absorbent paper material and shoot for something like butcher paper, which is often waterproof to a degree.</p>

<p>As with any spray paint application, multiple light coats will prevent runs/drips and result in a better image.</p>

<p>On the high tech end, there was a Kickstarter campaign called <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jasonmario/sprayprinter-smart-spray-paint-technology/description" rel="noreferrer">SprayPrinter</a>, which converted an ordinary spray paint can to a phone-controlled dot-matrix printer based on an image provided to the phone. Version one was relatively low resolution, 320 pixels square, while v2 increased that, but I've discovered that neither version appears to be available at a retail level.</p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/B9H36.jpg" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/B9H36.jpg" alt="spray printer image"></a></p>

<p>I'm not sure how well a text job would appear, although one can easily pixel convert text to old-style dot-matrix printing level!</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-25T22:10:59.910Z
This was an amazing answer thank you!  I am looking into SprayPrinter right now, too.
James Fitzpatrick
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-25T22:25:00.070Z
Please consider to upvote my answer and if it proves to be the most useful response, click the check mark to accept it. Good luck with your project.
fred_dot_u
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-25T22:04:35.547Z
2019-09-25T22:04:35.547Z
fred_dot_u
<p>I am hoping to paint ~200 words on a big graffiti wall in my town. The wall is on a pretty busy street, so I was hoping to do something like stenciling the paragraph on a big piece of paper and then cutting out the words, taping piece of paper with the cut-out words up to the wall, and then spray-painting over the piece of paper to get the text on the wall. That way, I could front-load the work at home and not have to spend too long painting out on the street.</p>

<p>But, this seems like a fair bit of work, and I also feel like the words might come out smudged if I paint the wall this way.</p>

<p>Any advice on how to best paint about 200 words on a wall?</p>

<painting><graffiti>
How can I facilitate spray-painting a long text on a wall?
James Fitzpatrick
# How can I facilitate spray-painting a long text on a wall?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-09-25)

I am hoping to paint ~200 words on a big graffiti wall in my town. The wall is on a pretty busy street, so I was hoping to do something like stenciling the paragraph on a big piece of paper and then cutting out the words, taping piece of paper with the cut-out words up to the wall, and then spray-painting over the piece of paper to get the text on the wall. That way, I could front-load the work at home and not have to spend too long painting out on the street.

But, this seems like a fair bit of work, and I also feel like the words might come out smudged if I paint the wall this way.

Any advice on how to best paint about 200 words on a wall?

**Tags:** painting, graffiti


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2019-09-25. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

I believe your method is sound if you take a few trivial precautions during the painting. You can avoid blurred and/or smudged lettering by ensuring the stencil is fastened well to the surface.

Consider to provide additional holes closely spaced to the letters. Applying masking tape through the holes will keep the edges of the stencil tight to the surface, but will not add much to your labor efforts. Obviously, you'll want additional masking (stencil area) well outbound of the lettering and lettering support holes, to keep overspray clear of the background.

The material you use for your stencil will be important too. Avoid absorbent paper material and shoot for something like butcher paper, which is often waterproof to a degree.

As with any spray paint application, multiple light coats will prevent runs/drips and result in a better image.

On the high tech end, there was a Kickstarter campaign called [SprayPrinter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jasonmario/sprayprinter-smart-spray-paint-technology/description), which converted an ordinary spray paint can to a phone-controlled dot-matrix printer based on an image provided to the phone. Version one was relatively low resolution, 320 pixels square, while v2 increased that, but I've discovered that neither version appears to be available at a retail level.

[![spray printer image](https://i.sstatic.net/B9H36.jpg)](https://i.sstatic.net/B9H36.jpg)

I'm not sure how well a text job would appear, although one can easily pixel convert text to old-style dot-matrix printing level!

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: This was an amazing answer thank you!  I am looking into SprayPrinter right now, too.  
> **username_1**: Please consider to upvote my answer and if it proves to be the most useful response, click the check mark to accept it. Good luck with your project.  

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