Please excuse my low-res iPhone shoot of my first stencil ever. At this point, I’m still experimenting with different brand paint, sometimes mixing brands, and some of it came out a little runny.
About the Stencil.
The objective of the 8-Bit Yin-Yang is to render a circular shape in squares, making the little dot the smallest unbreakable unit i. e. the pixel, thus presenting the yin-yang utilizing the least amount of pixels possible. This was a challenge, as I discovered that the resulting number of pixels was odd. After much consideration, I embraced the assymetry. The stencil I cut out is of half the yin-yang, containing the extra center pixel. When applying, I use this extra pixel to align the stencil for the second color. After aligning I dodge the extra pixel with my finger to prevent it from being rendered in both colors. When doing multiple yin-yangs next to each other, I like to alternate which color gets the extra pixel, maintaining a sort of quantum equilibrium – never still, always striving toward a balance but unable to settle at the true center mark, as it falls between available slots. What I also discovered was that it works great as a half as well – the other half is suggested in the negative space, which also works metaphorically for me.