Guide to Painting Straight Lines

Guide To Painting Straight Lines


Credit for this goes to Ops_Was_A_Truck:


1. Pick up some blue painter's tape at Home Depot or Lowe's. Use a combination of that and paper (or whatever you want) to mask of everything except for the stripe you want to paint.

2. I assume you're painting Hasbro plastic. If so, pick up a can of Krylon Fusion (available at Michael's, Wal-Mart, amongst other places.)

3. I figure you can make the jump from A to B here and figure out you'll be spraypainting. THE KEY TO STRAIGHT LINES IS LIGHT, LIGHT APPLICATION OF SPRAYPAINT. Spray your vehicle from at least 2 feet away, lightly, with the Fusion ONCE - i.e., run the spray across the surface ONE TIME. Then WALK AWAY. Then come back about 5 minutes later and do it again ONCE. Repeat until you've got a clear, solid coat.

See, I used to fuck this up a whole lot by masking off my lines and then just going to town, loading down an area with spray. When you pull up the tape, you get shitty-ass lines with lots of bleeding. If you spray ONCE, let the paint set, come back about 5-10 minutes later and spray again, (wash, rinse, repeat) you'll get a nice, clean line.


The problem is not so much the masking tape - it's how much you spraypaint (or brush on) the figure. The more paint you lay on, the more liquid you've put on that surface, giving the paint the ability to look for (and seep into) any holes the masking tape has not covered. You gotta remember - paint, because it's a liquid, will be able to cover a lot more surface area than the tape, which only sticks to the very top of a surface.

In order to get nice crisp lines, I press down on the spray nozzle VERY quickly - like a half-second or so - repeatedly. Repeated bursts over the area you've masked off should give the paint a second to dry. Remember to wait a few seconds to let the paint dry, too. Repeat this over and over again until you've covered the area you want.

This took me a long time to get right, so you might want to practice it. It's one of the easiest tricks to practice, too - grab a cheap old plastic cup, mask it off with masking tape and practice the above method. You'll find it works really well.

You can achieve a similar effect with a paintbrush by dabbing off more of the paint before you start painting.

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