I stopped at a local art supply store to pick up some of the costly thin masking tape. The young man waiting on me asked me about my intended use. When I told him that I would be painting schematic straight lines (my control panel), he made a suggestion for an alternative technique to the expensive, hard to handle film style masking tape. He pointed out that the clean edge that is being sought with the film tape will often be blurred because of microscopic imperfections in the tape and/or the application of the tape. IN addition it is expensive and hard to maipulate. His method follows. I used it in several test applications and it worked beautifully. I'm ready for the control panel. The masking tape to use is the blue "no lift" masking tape from the hardware store. Outline the line to be painted, with no overlaps. Make all four corners of the line clean and square. Xacto makes this an easy chore. The key "trick" is next. Paint a thin coat of acrylic matte medium, that dries transparent, in the line area outlined. When this is thoroughly dry, paint the acrylic color line. When all is dry, pull up the masking tape and you will see the cleanest line that you could ever want. The matte medium filled in the valleys that exist in the tapes paper texture. Those valleys are what gives the paper its "no lift" characteristic. I haven't tried the technique on a model yet - but I imagine that it will be equally useful. I am a real fan of acrylics, thus my description above. I would presume that one could use a thinned flat, oil based, clear-coat in lieu of the acrylic matte medium. This base could be followed by an enamel color.
Yes it turned out transparent along the edge of the colored line. However, I find nothing on the bottle that says "transparent'. I'm of the opinion that it is by nature transparent, until a tint is added. I ran out of black ink and my LHS isn't open on Sunday. So I took a clean 1/2 oz vial and put some of the matte medium in to about 1/2 full. Then I started adding India Ink until I got a opaque black. I painted a line with that "paint" and it took the acrylic overcoat very well. Back to your comment, I am an absolute novice on the subject of paint. But as I say, the bottle didn't say "transparent" - and the clerk made no issue of that quality when he selected the bottle from the shelf. Please let me know if there is such a characteristic for future reference. I've amended the original to cover your comment and my lack of knowledge. Thanks for bringing this up.:thumbs_up:
This is an old technique that bears repeating. I have been custom painting for 25+ years and here's how I've been doing it when painting models: Paint your base color. Lay out strips of masking tape, (the blue or green tape) , on a piece of glass, cut a clean edge(s) with a fresh blade (I mostly use single edge razor blades for this), apply the tape. Be sure to burnish the edges around all the contours of the model. Paint the unmasked area with base color to seal the edges of the tape, then paint with the 2nd color, when finished, you should end up with nice crisp color separations. To keep cutting sharp edges only use the cutting edge for 5 or 6 cuts, after that the blade will have a tendency to tear rather than cut. Single edge blades have two ends so you should get about 10 to 15 cuts per blade, buy the hundred pack.
Works when painting the layout room walls, too. Just use a thin line of clear caulk among the edge of the masking tape and you get a sharp division when you remove it.
