Painting Lines on buckets?

[brentfilms]

So I'm finishing up my MRCE mod and need to paint the lines on the tears and back of the helmet. What is the best way to do this?

 

Original screen-used helmets look painted, so my first inclination would be to paint them with a paintbrush. But I'm afraid with my hands the lines wouldn't be too straight/uniform and it would look pretty messy. I've also thought about using vinyl striping. The other issue is how thick are they and how do you get them so evenly spaced. Are there decals? What are my options? Thanks for the tips.

 

Brent

[ThayNerd[TK]]

Nice lid Chris. I've used decals on both of my TE2s so I haven't had to deal with this problem yet.

[TK8776 jgarrettg]

If you want to paint it I would suggest a line brush. It has long bristles at least 1" long. They tend to insulate the bristle tip from hand shake. For straight lines you can hold a ruler at a 45 degree angle and run the metal part of the brush against it's edge.

[brentfilms]

Sharpie Marker. Great idea. And I never thought about how a long brush would isolate shaky hand movements.

 

Thanks a bunch!

 

Brent

[langy]

Sharpie Marker. Great idea. And I never thought about how a long brush would isolate shaky hand movements.

 

Thanks a bunch!

 

Brent

 

 

Brent, you could also use painters and decorators masking tape..(the professional stuff)..if memory serves it's blue in colour, and will provide you with a perfect straight edge finish,

 

or like smitty says you can just hand paing them, (as most of the original helmets were hand painted, they wouldn't have had perfectly straight lines anyway, so i little 'uneveness' would add to the helmet looking authentic

[cr4nky]

Or you can do as I did, just paint them freehand. It´s not really that difficult.

[brentfilms]

Thanks for all the advice! I used the sharpie approach and think it worked really well. I'm much better at sketching than painting, so the sharpie felt more natural in my hand. Plus, as per screen-used photo references my lines still look hand made and not ultra perfect.

 

Thanks!

 

[ThayNerd[TK]]

Those turned out nicely.