noob needs some help....

I usually just paint the edges of the tire very carefully with a brush, then mask off a less precise area and spray the rest. When I have masked them, I have covered the wheel with masking tape, then used the side of a pencil lead to rub the image of the hub onto the tape. Then I pull the tape off and cut out that circle. There are guys who use a circle template directly as a freehand shield, or to cut out perfectly round circles of tape.

As far as differently colored panels, you just use a slightly different shade of paint, or a slightly more or less glossy overcoat. You can also mix drops of other colors into your metallic color. It's pretty simple, just use your imagination and experiment a little bit to get colors that you like.

I spray the center hub color 1st, then after its dry I pour some paint in a tray, to a level just below the tires wheel rimline, and just roll the tire in it.
If you do it right the paint will be displaced by the wheel and lay itself right up to the ridge of the wheel
like so with paint.

Hey I love IROC's idea that sounds cool. My only problem would be that guaranteed I would drop the wheel into the paint and have to start again
Apart from that, I paint my wheels very similar to IROC, except that after I have sprayed the centre I get a 10/0 brush to paint around the wheel rims and then use a standard brush for the rest of the tire. Depending on how fussy you are, a quick dry-brush with dark grey will bring out the detail in your tires tread pattern.

For NMF I use two or three different shades of ALCLAD II to create the shaded panel effect.

Cheers
Darren

I've had a little luck when using bare metal foil by rotating the sheets so that on some of the panels the "grain" of the material is running at a 45 degree angle to the rest.. It's very subtle, but works okay.

jaymon

I use a different method to paint my tyres. I paint the wheel the proper colour first. Then I dip a brush in some thinner and touch it to the tyre where it meets the wheel. Let the thinner flow around the join, you might have to touch the brush to the tyre in a few different places. Then you can dip the brush in some flat black paint, and touch that to the small pool of thinner. The paint will flow around the wheel, giving a perfect line. If you use acrylics, you can even use water instead of thinner.

For different shades of paint on panels, try adding colours to the metallic paint and mask off individual panels. Or you could use different shades of alclad, and spray the seperately masked off panels.

Darson - don't drop it ! A toothpick or appropriate piece of thin wire through the hub will give a nice handle and allow you to roll the wheel without directly holding it. This does assume the wheel has a "through and through" type hub however so won't work in all situations.

Wow, these are some great techniques. Thanks everyone!

I used Pingtang's method too. But sometimes, the wheel and tire seperation isn't deep enough to gget a good wicking action. For those times, I use a sharpie brand black ink pen - fine tip. The pen gives you much more control and I use it to draw around the wheel. It drys a bit shinny so a float coat will be needed later.

I use my Dremel. I take 2 wooden toothpick that come to a flattened point on one end . I put the tire on one and break the other one in half to get the "chuck" size and spool it up on my dremel at low rpm.

Sorry... paint the wheel first so you odnt have to be neat with that.

load you paint brush with the appropiete base color turn on the dremel and paint the tire.