Creating the Stencil from an image.

Using a photo of classical pianist Lang Lang that I had found on a popular search engine, I created my stencil for spraying. 

I did this by first putting a filter on the picture to give it a posterised effect. This would make it easier to distinguish highlights and shadows, and thus would make it easier to get a clear stencil.

This worked for the most part, however I found the tones to be too similar in shade to form a clear distinction between them. To solve this, I adjusted the levels and exposer.

From this point, I was able to remove the background and work in layers to create my two stencil bases. This was done by selecting the lightest areas first, removing/erasing them, and colouring the area that was left behind using Clipping Layers. 

Here are my two finished stencil bases.

I then printed out these images and proceeded to remove the black pieces to create my stencil.