I sat down and started masking. I knew there was going to be a lot of it. What I didn't know was how to go about the next step. The tricky thing about brush painting (for me at least) is its not very friendly to masks. In my mind its like asking for paint to run under, and when it does it can really do a number depending on just how far it seeps under the mask. I knew I wanted the color to be Prussian Blue, but I knew I couldn't hand paint it, and I don't have an airbrush its been packed in anticipation of a move. It was going to have to be a rattle bomb. But what color? It was going to have to be darker for this method to work but the only blues I had were lighter than the Prussian blue I planned to use, so that meant black. Luckily after I masked it and checking the array of rattle bomb for a 3rd time I found a Dark Blue... but little did I know
All told it was about 3-4 hours of masking for the whole model. Spray cans have terrible over spray so you have to be super thorough. I took a few breaks to stretch here and there. Considering how well my last masking project went I was getting tense.
I try to waste no time between masking and painting, and as I descended to the paint booth/garage I could actually feel my anxiety rising, and that does not usually happen to me.
I started to spray the dark blue and in all my years of spray painting Ive never had a "runaway" can, but this one did. I took my finger off and it kept spraying! I pulled the nozzle off to stop it. My plan of course was multiple slow build coats, but now the can was spraying all or none. I kept with it, gave it time flipped it over and then did the other side. It was going to be a while before I knew how the masks had worked. The plan was to give it a coupld days to ensure the paint dried, then start stippling and brushing (almost dry brushing) the Prussian blue over it, and then removing all the masks. If I check before brushing it would mean I would have to remask to hand brush the Prussian Blue. So once again I had to do another step before I would know if it was even worth it.
Finally after another hour of brush painting the moment of truth and I removed the masks:
Not perfect, but very very good. Here are some of the places it didn't go so great:
Overall though, i think it looks excellent. It doesn't look like a 5 year old did it now! Better yet, the touch ups in this case don't have to be perfect, or seamless --in fact they only add to the style (not that I'm a huge fan of touch ups.)