|
Often masking is used to shield and divide color areas while painting. Even a hand-held sheet of cardstock or heavy paper is useful in weathering. Closer distances produce sharper delineation, while farther can produce feathering effects. Simple stencils can be made with rough vee shapes for wash-downs and jagged irregular holes for rust or paint flaking. Standard stencil sets can provide fonts of characters and shapes ala the prototype. For more well defined edges, thinner adhesive shields are used. Most common are tapes. Painter's masking tape is far too thick and sticky. Impervious to most media, very thin and less sticky artist's or modeler's masking tapes are found in better hobbyshops. Some prefer plastic tapes (Magic Mending Tape), but these should be checked for compatibility with medium. Since tape rolls are frequently dented from handling, for truly straight division, new edges must be established by fastening tape to a sheet of glass and trimming with a very sharp knife guided by a straight-edge. Often tapes are too sticky, pulling paint off during removal so adhesion must be reduced by pressing it down on a glass sheet one or more times. Spray should be angled slightly off the edge to avoid build-up and seepage under tape. Successive adjacent swathes should not overlay edge. Several light passes should be made, instead of one flooding pass. Removal time is a bit tricky. Too soon may allow paint to run across border. Too late may lift solid bridges across edge. To reduce lifting of undercoat during removal, tape should never be pull upward, but should be rolled back close to the surface, very gently to reduce stress. Larger areas behind tape are best shielded by thin plastic wrap held in place by tape. Testors offers a thin, stretchable, 2" wide, tape, with low adhesion, called Parafilm M. Leaving no adhesive behind, it follows contours nicely and edge can be curved slightly. Advertised stretching is 5 times original length. Often used by commercial artists very thin, more delicate frisket, can be cut and trimmed easily to any shape, on a sheet of glass with a swivel knife. Adhesion is much less. For more irregular surfaces and depressions such as window glazing, liquid latex masking is easily brushed on and after curing, trimmed with a sharp knife. Adhesion is usually fairly light. Thickness should be sufficient to permit grabbing with tweezers and resist tearing on removal. BACK TO PAINTING AND COATING BACK TO METHODS INDEX |
| Browser -- Ibrowse V2.3 -- 2003
Text -- CygnusEd Professional V4.2 -- 1999 Drawings -- XCAD-3000 V1.1 -- 1992 Graphs -- Math-Amation V1.0d -- 1988 Rendering -- Image FX V4.1 -- 2000 Digital Camera -- Kodak DC25 -- 1998 Digital Camera 2 -- Kodak DC280 -- 2003 Scanner -- HP Scanjet 6200C -- 2000 HTML and mistakes -- BUDB -- 1931 |
