Well I finally got some time to finish my next tutorial. Here it is.
Tricked Out Tribal Flames
What you need:
*Basic airbrush setup
*Long hair paintbrush, pinstriping brush is ideal
*Spray Paint
-Sandable Primer
-Base color, (I used Silver,Black, and White)
-Airbrush paint, (Transparent Green, Candy Emerald Green)
-Lettering Enamel (thick enamel paint, or model paint)
-Clear Coat
*Waterproof Sand Paper(for paint prep and finish)
Let's jump right in. You should prime and paint your surface. I used a plexiglass sheet for my tutorial. If you need a refresher on how to prep and prime plastic for paint. You can go here to my prepping plastic how to.
I'm going to start the tutorial off with my base color all ready to go. My base color is Carbon Fiber. I painted this base using the technique in my Carbon Fiber Effect tut.
Now that I have my base color. Let's cut straight to the good stuff. First I Mask off the entire area to be painted. I didn't use striping tape because i didn't have any, but you could go that route. I'll touch on that at the end.
Masking
Next I sketched out what I wanted the flames to look like. If you need a reference you can go here.
I filled in the outline to make it show up better in the photo, but obviously you don't have to do that.
Next, I cut out the outline with an X-Acto knife. Use a new blade, it makes a big difference. Notice I didn't follow the pattern exactly. It's more important to make smooth curves and cuts.
Next I used White Spray Paint to lay down a light colored base so my green shows up uber bright.
Next I used Transparent Bright Green.
Then I used some shelf liner and sprayed Candy Green. I did this for some texture( In other words I just did it cause I thought it would look cool. This step was obviously not critical).
Then I went over the whole flames with Candy Emerald Green to really bring out the green. Remember Candies are the trick to uber bright looking designs.
Then I removed the mask. Carefully. Don't lift up the flames. A trick to this is to go slow and peel the masking take at a sharp angle towards the direction your going. Almost flat in the direction your going.
Now the drop shadows. This is what makes old skool flames look 3D. Just lay down Transparent Black on one side of all the flames. Go slow and smooth. This is where a little skill helps. This is challenging to keep smooth strokes to make it look natural. Notice how I overlapped in a couple of places. This because once the striping is down it will look natural.
Ok, on to pin striping. First off, this is challenging. I'm not an expert pinstriper. This is where you want a thick enamel paint and a brush with long bristles. I bought two pinstriping brushes for this project. They were about 5$ each. I looked at Michael's Craft Store for brushes like these with no joy. I got mine at CoastAirbrush.com.
There are not too many tricks here. You just need to practice. The tricks I have learned are lay the brush at a real low angle to the surface and pull the brush through the strokes. Also end the stroke at the tip of the flame easy and it will come out pretty sharp.
Here's what it looks like after the pinstriping.
And here are some pics after Clear Coating it.
Some final notes.
*Pinstriping is hard and I need to continue to practice.
*Good planning for the actual fire pattern makes a big difference. Have a good plan. Trying to sketch flames off of the top of your head is hard.
I hope you all like this tut. Let me know if you have any questions.
Tony