Just a small update tonight.
I have been weighing my options on how I can airbrush this paint job for a few weeks now. I could do like this guy did or I can use stencils. I finally decided on the latter about a week ago. So I sat down and took a good long look at the ARPAT pattern. It seems to be 3 layers with the lightest on the bottom and the darkest on top. The pattern itself is just blobs with pixilated edges. The edges seem to be what I will call full pixels and half pixels.
I sat down and did a few sketches on graphing paper to get a feel for creating the designs and then took it to photoshop and using my wacom tablet and a ¼” grid in photoshop I drew some patterns. What I plan to do is to trace these onto clear acetate overhead projector sheets and then cut them out using an Exato knife. Then I will paint the whole case a light gray followed by a lighter gray spraying from the patterns, then I will spray a second layer of darker patterns followed by a third layer of even darker patterns. Then I will coat the whole thing in a few layers of mat finish clearcoat. Ok let’s move on to the pics.
ARPAT (ARmy PATtern)
The first sketch I did. Notice the coffee stain.
The second sketch I did. The graphing grid is ¼”.
Click for larger image
This is the first digital sketch I did. Each pixel is 1/4".
Click for larger image
Part 2
Click for larger imageFor the first half I used a 1/4" grid created from guides.
Click for larger image
For the second half I used the normal photoshop grid set to 1". To draw the lines I used the pen tool to mark my pattern then right clicked and clicked "stroke pattern. I had the brush set to 1px with 100% hardness.
I will make the pattern files available in a 2 printable tiff files. They are sized to 8.5”x11” @300dpi.