Team Driver tips: How to paint without masks

Tips from a painter: Painting effects without liquid masking
By:Jani Hovi

In this article, I’ll tell you about a little painting project of mine by the name Ihqupinkki (“delightful pink”). I included a couple of pictures I took of the different stages as I was painting. The technique is a simple and fast way to paint a car body without liquid masking.

The point is to use a brush to create the desired effects for which you’d normally use tape and liquid masking and spray paint each color separately. While painting with a brush, it’s important to do the brush strokes in the same direction. Note also that the lines must be connected so that the pattern looks continuous. You can get different patterns depending on the hardness of the brush and how much paint is applied. I’d suggest using for example overhead projector slides to discover the different possibilities.

Stage 1

Having learned from previous mistakes, I first drew a guiding pattern on the outer surface of the body. Then I used black paint to paint the areas around the lines intended as shadings. In the picture, I’m painting the white effects, the point of which is also to widen the brush painted areas to make airbrushing easier later – when there’s more space between areas to be airbrushed, the less likely there’s going to be any leaking.

Stage 2

In this stage, the pink fade-outs have been done in the front of the body. The black shadings were also faded at the back of the body. In this stage, it’s also easy to fix any possible brushing mistakes.

Stage 3

The darker red has been added to the back of the body using airbrush. Now there were still the white areas in the front left to paint. (This can be done fast using spray paint).

Stage 4

The window frames are easy to cut into the original window masks. The frames must be painted last, not before the white paint is applied. Use a craft knife to cut the frames to the size you want and paint them with the desired color.

Finally, you only need to remove the window masks and cut the body to the desired shape.