As some of you know, I'm working on a Williams Bros. GeeBee-Z. It has a rather intricate black-on-yellow paint scheme that is going to be quite the challenge for me as I've not tackled something of this complexity before.
I sat and thought for quite a while about how I was going to make paint masks for the wings and fuselage. Fortunately, 1:1 three-view drawings were supplied with the kit. I made several photocopies of these in order to cut them up to use as templates for making my paint masks.
But I think I've come up with a pretty cool method to actually make the masks themselves. Tell me if this is something that you've seen or used before.
1) Lay down a rather long sheet of saran wrap
2) Over the saran wrap, lay down several strips of 3m painter's tape, sticky side down
3) Using rubber cement to hold them in place, lay your templates down on top of the 3m tape
4) With a new #11 blade, cut along the edges of the template
5) Peel the templates from the 3m tape
6) Dry fit the paint masks on whatever parts you're masking
7) When you're satisfied with the fit, peel the saran wrap off the back of the 3m tape and apply the masks to your kit
This is good for both pre-designed paint schemes (as the one on the Williams Brothers kit was) or your own designs as well. Freehand works very nicely, and if you need to duplicate your work (i.e. for the other side of the model kit), just flip the newly created paint mask over and run around it with the X-acto.
I can post pictures if you all like.