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Knight Titan Chevrons – Against the Grain

Hey everyone! Travis AKA Nugg Murda here from Splatterbug Painting.

Just thought I would do up a quick How To: guide and explain some of the choices and reasoning behind why I do the chevrons on Knight Titans.

I thought this might be a good time to post this up because I have recently been doing some work in progress shots and one of them was of a shoulder pad I was tapping off and preparing for some chevron work. I am not going to get into how you tape stuff off or build up X layer or use this paint because there are a ton of guides to that out there.

This is just meant to be a little suggestion / argument towards going against the grain or the popular method of doing stripes, lines and chevrons.

Within 10 minutes of me posting this I was being bombarded with messages and texts telling me its “wrong” to lay the black first and its “easier” to cut the black back in over top of whatever color you are trying to line in. Well here are a few pictures of my final product and I think it came out all right!?!

 
Now let me explain why I do it this way. First off I am using an airbrush. This allows me to slowly build up and cover any previous layer much easier then if you are hand brushing. As long as you don’t rush and get sloppy the layers are so thin anyways with an airbrush it really doesn’t matter what color is under as long as you take the time to cover and build up the layers slowly and completely. 
Secondly no matter what tape you use to mask your lines, I use Tamiya masking tape, and no matter how well you have laid it out and sealed it you will get micro bleeds under the tape. This is especially common the edges especially where there is any difference in height compared to the plane you laid the tape on. 
Doing it the way I choose to reduces the difficulty of correcting micro bleeds. Instead of having to go in and correct black bleed onto my smoothly blended cream I only have to go in and line some pure black back over micro bleeds of cream onto black. So what do you think is easier? Having minimal cream color bleed onto black and covering that up with flat black or having black bleed onto my 3 shades of cream blend and trying to hand brush / correct that and get it to match perfectly so the transitions are as smooth as they would be with an airbrush? 
So despite everyone telling me its way easier to lay black over X color by trying it my own way I found a much easier and faster technique that works for me. I spend a lot less time making corrections now and my stuff is looking cleaner than ever.
So don’t be afraid to try something new or go against the grain. I am always looking for ways to make painting faster and more efficient so feel free to share any tips you may have or if you think you have an easier or faster way please share it with the rest of us!
For more updates and pictures of my work in progress stuff check me out on Facebook, thanks again!

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