Flying Barn Door
The flying plank has become a flying barn door. If anyone is interested in the painting techniques, here you go:
1. The motors and RX, etc. were masked with blue painters tape and plastic wrap.
2. The silver (Top) side was brush coated with a very thin coat of latex primer/sealer making it a dull white.
3. The white side with blue lettering (bottom) was selectively brush coated with latex primer over the blue lettering and any exposed packing tape in an effort to keep the printing from showing through. Nothing sticks to the packing tape very well except a mist coat of 3M super 77, but I did not do that on this project.
4. The construction lines were then laid out on top and bottom with a long straight edge and a black permanent marker.
5. The red was then spray painted with a light translucent coat only in the areas where needed. (It oversprayed into the white areas, but that was not a problem.)
6. The green was added at the bottom holding the spray can far from the surface to create a lightly dusted coat with the can always moving. A little green goes a long way.
7. Milk chocolate brown was sprayed on the edges and then dusted over the entire surface to dull it down. The paint was mostly not sprayed on to the surface, but parallel to the surface about a foot over the surface letting gravity pull it down. The can was always sweeping rapidly to prevent brown spots, but uneven color in places is a good thing as it looks more realistic.
8. A tiny bit of tan was spritzed in a few places to simulate lighter colored mold. Mostly the can was empty so it splattered and hit where it hit.
10. The white trim was painted by hand with a small brush using the latex primer/sealer. Towards the bottom where it is meant to look especially dirty and moldy, a “dry brush” technique was used, meaning there was little or no fresh paint on the brush, and only light streaky strokes were applied. Part of the challenge is to avoid being neat and even about your work. Mistakes in color or texture are helpful, but not painting over the lines.
11. The construction lines were then drawn again with a wide black magic marker, or in this case I used a dry erase marker because it was what I had. The dark lines make the color transitions “POP” and even though it is not necessarily photo realistic, it looks better than reality. Fine detail is not visible from any distance, so it is better to be a little bold.
12. The wood grain, weathering, and black mold were then added freehand using the same black marker. The challenge here is to avoid boring consistency. Wood grain needs to be parallel, but not straight, and not in line with the wood panels. Knots are just a black circle with a spiral around them. Be sure to make them round to oval in the general direction of the wood grain, and don’t always put them in the middle of the plank. They can be on the edges as well. Don’t forget the “check” lines which radiate out from the center of the knot. Avoid crossing panel lines with wood grain as it would be an obvious “mistake”. Black mold is just lots of streaks with a greater concentration of streaks in areas where it is darkest. Use the black marker to ding up corners, and create visual cracks, especially at the ends of the planks. I tend to use the tip of the marker, not so much the flat, because big heavy black marks are too bold in most places. Cracks, corner dings, holes, and the centers of knots are the exception to this rule. Throw in some random scuffs for good measure but avoid crossing panel lines unless the scuff would have happened after the door was built.
13. The end result was sealed with a light coat of mat clear. All of the paint was stock hardware store stuff, nothing special or expensive.
Despite using as little paint as possible, I am sure it is now more tail heavy than before, so I went to the hardware store and got a big metal handle and a hasp to add near the leading edge for extra nose weight. The handle helps to hide the RX. The hasp is in a nonsensical location for CG reasons, but it is what it is. The hardware, like the batteries, is just attached with Velcro so it will probably go flying in a crash.
Oh, and I included the picture of the real barn door I was trying to emulate.
