This chapter covers the process of painting the Mandalorian helmet. This process involves masking the helmet, applying the metallic undercoat, and then using enamel spray paint to finish the helmet.
Once the helmet had been primed, it was time to start painting the helmet. Because this helmet needed to appear battle damaged, I had to apply a another coat of paint underneath the surface coat. This undercoat was a Rustoleum brand metallic silver. This particular paint bonded very well to the primer, but would cause me problems down the road.
Once the helmet had a even undercoating of silver, I started masking off the sections of the helmet. Because this was my first time using this particular paint, I decided to start with an large, simple section. I used masking tape to make an unbroken seal around the dome. I definitely should have used notebook paper to extend the masking, because spray paint isn't an perfectly accurate.
A word to the wise: Test your new paint on pieces of scrap material. This spray paint says it's a satin finish, but honestly, it's a very rich gloss. This isn't a huge problem, as I'll "wash" the final product with several coats of watered down black paint.
If you take your time and be very accurate with the masking process, you should end up with some wonderfully clean lines like these. Masking tape is excellent for masking off areas, but the adhesive will not stick to the helmet forever. A fresh piece of tape will be much more successful at preventing paint from bleeding into masked areas.
For some reason, the enamel spray paint didn't adhere well to the metallic undercoat. There were several areas where you could see the characteristic flaking pattern of bad adhesion. Luckily, I was able to give it another coat of paint, which seemed to clear up these problems.
The next step was more masking, in preparation for the brown paint.
Masking tape doesn't cover curved areas particularly well, because it bunches up and forces you to use a ton of small pieces. In a situation like this, a good alternative to masking tape would be electrical tape.
The brown paint turned out to be more glossy than the can described. On the bright side, it matches the green paint's color and sheen quite nicely.
On the down side, the enamel paint did not adhere well to the metallic undercoat. When I removed the masking tape, large patches of green enamel came up too. While I was a little worried about this, I decided to proceed with the rest of the painting.
Because I didn't want the masking to pull up more of the paint, I did two things differently.
Instead of putting more enamel directly on top the undercoat, I decided to put apply a second coat of primer on top of the metallic paint.
My second step was to demask the tape before starting the masking process it. I stuck each piece of tape to my shirt before masking off each section. This weakened which weakened the adhesive of the tape, and lessened the chance it would pull off more paint.
The extra primer and demasked tape worked, mostly. There were still a few patches that the enamel and primer pulled up, which points to a problem with the silver undercoat. Other than that, I am very pleased with how this painting process turned out.
So in hindsight, there are a few things I'd do differently.
So in hindsight, there are a few things I'd do differently.
1) Metallic Undercoat. I would definitely choose a different type of metallic paint for the undercoat. The Rust-Oleum Industrial Enamel aluminum color paint had problems when painting over top of it. I will definitely not use this paint again.
2) Satin vs. Flat finish. There is a difference between a satin finish and a flat finish. Satin, by nature, has a slight amount of gloss, or sheen, to it. A flat color will have none at all. For this particular project, I went with a satin paint, expecting a flat finish. On the bright side, I can can still dirty up this helmet and hide the sheen of the paint with a black-wash of watered down acrylic paint.
3 Don't spray paint inside of a house. Seriously, it's a dumb idea.
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