Walk into any tattoo shop and flip open a book of pictures that artists have taken and chances are you are going to run into a hell of a lot of Chinese and Japanese symbols. I always snicker when I see people with three or more characters running down their leg or arm because chances are some of them are incorrect. No, I don't write Chinese or Japanese but I have seen enough examples of botched words, letters and symbols to know one when I see one. The six characters in the book represent words and are accurate in their design but there are variations on them that might lead some people to think that they are a little off. You have to keep in mind that these are stencils so getting a 100% accurate design to start with it hard let alone when you are using them with paints or airbrushing.

Dover Publications "Fun With Chinese Symbols" Stencils

This is one of the smaller books from Dover Publications, a sleek and tiny four and a quarter by almost six inches. That means that the designs you are working with are about an inch smaller than that; if you were planning on doing larger symbols with a book like this you might want to look at their online catalog for some of the adult versions that offer you more designs and a bit more detail. As it stands there are six Chinese characters in the book, they were taken from the most common words in the language as well as the ones that have be best wishes and intentions behind them. They are, Joy, Life, Long Life, Love, Luck and Wealth.

When I started ordering these books for art projects I was hoping that they would be plastic stencils but they aren't. They are cardstock and while they are thicker than regular paper they have about the same thickness as poster board. That means that there are limitations to what you can do with them and the number of times that they can be reused. If you are using these to stimple [not stipple] with a round brush then you might be able to get more use out of them as the edges won't be getting as roughed up but if you are brushing on paint, well, it will only be a matter of time before something ends up getting bent or ripped.

The designs have a lot of curves and tricky sections so if you are doing multiple layers of color you might want to use an airbrush system instead of paints. You can get a basic airbrushing kit for about $25.00 but they are the ones that use compressed air cans so your coverage might not be all that great. You can also use an acetate film. Apply the film to the surface you are working on, draw out the design on the film and use an X-Acto Knife to score the design into the film them lift off the reverse of where you want to paint. This can be time consuming but if you have a specific project in mind the extra time and effort will pay off in the end. If you want to use these as a basic stencil to hand paint then use a pencil to draw it out first instead of getting paint on the cardstock.

Considering that this cost me about a dollar I wasn't all that irked at the cardstock that was used, yes, plastic would have been nicer but hey, I was happy that I didn't have to poke out sections or deal with something that was as thin as regular copy paper. Kids can have fun with this if they are using crayons, colored pencils or even markers but they aren't going to last all that long because of the thinness of the cardstock.

The Bottom Line

Dover has a lot of stencil books in their product line up, some of them use cardstock, some use plastic. This isn't a bad pick for a kids project or if you want something that is disposable but if you need to make more than five or six designs from a stencil you might run in to some trouble with paint ruining the detail on smaller sections or having the cardstock crack, rip or get saturated with paint and warping when it dries. This has a suggested price of $1.50 at the website but if you hit the site often you will know that these books often go on sale for about a dollar. For that price it is a great thing for kids or as I said, something that is disposable for arts and crafts projects.


As always, thanks for the visit…

~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~

© 2008 Freak369


Other Dover titles
King Tut Coloring Book
Halloween Laser Cut Stencils
Decorate A Pumpkin Sticker Book
Halloween Coloring Book



Recommended: Yes