painting stripes

For large, flat or slightly curved surfaces, a great deal of masking can be done with frisket paper.  This is a low tack plastic that airbrush artists use for fancy masking.  Some types you can draw/sketch on.  Once you establish the pattern you need, carefully cut it out with a new, sharp exacto blade.  I often use a swivel knife for complex curves.

http://www.amazon.com/Grafix-Prepared-Frisket-0-001-sheet/dp/B004BNB4RK

Reid

I too like the blue painters tape, as well as the frog tape which seems to be alomst the same stuff as the Tamiya tape. And while it is expensive it is probably cheaper inthe end becasue it comes in such a big roll..

I have always had good luck with Tamiya masking tape as well but I did these with blue painters tape and it came out great.

i've seen commercials for this and think i will try it. i usually mask the edge with tamiya tape and "fill in" with painters blue tape, yellow tape or ace purple tape. as soon as the paint is tacky pull the tape off to avoide a ridge. with acrylics that's right after cleaning the airbrush. these MAS stripes i used rattle can, white down and masked for red but it took for times to tape because i kept screwing up where the second stripe tape went and this compounded the problem. finally figured out what i was doing wrong.

If you have an airbrush, use it.

If it were me, i'd mask around the areas to get the stripes that is, the total stripe area.

Then i'd a/b the lightest blue colour over the total area.

Get some masking tape and mask the area to be left light blue.

Then paint the total area the medium blue.

Mask the area to be left medium blue (so now you've got light blue painted and still masked, and medium blue painted and masked) then paint the dark blue.

Take off all your tape - should be nicely painted.

If you use a brush, this method might not work as well, as the area with the darkest blue would, by then, have about 4 coats of paint - base, light, medium, dark and hence you might lose a bit of detail underneath.

Hope this helps.

Frog Tape !!!

If you don't have an airbrush, you're best be (in my humble opinion) is probably going to be masking tape and brush painting. I don't think a rattle can will give you enough control for those stripes.