Thanks for the nice comments everyone!
Grimstuff's comment about "micro-detail" got me to thinking that maybe a description of how I use the liquid mask to start, and then another technique to end my paint work,
might be of interest. As anyone who has used it knows that liquid mask leaves a basically smooth or liquid looking edges when removed. This is not good if you want the paint
to look chipped from an impact,as Boba's does.
My thinking was to find a way to give the edges as much small detail as possible in the initial masking and then even more
at the end.
My choice for tools finally came down to a squeeze bottle and a plastic toothpick. Your choice of liquid mask.
I tried the syringe but it needed too much stopping for refill and wasn't a steady enough flow the way it worked.
Basically I just put down a blob of liquid mask near my stencil line and then push it up to the line in very small amounts to create a much more
broken edge affect. You won't loose the larger basic shape of things but you will gain a more detailed look. Remember you are working on very
small areas and adding even smaller abstract shapes to the edges. You can use whatever you want to move the liquid around just keep the tip
free of dried mask. There really are no mistakes as long as you stay near the stencil lines.
If this takes a little longer then painting with a small brush, and I'm not sure that it does, it's worth it.
The final touch is this.
After the paint is dry, and with an Exaco blade held perpendicular to the paint lines, I go along and chip the upper layers of the paint color so in the end it
really is chipped paint! It's not done on every line maybe 30-40% or so. These are very small chips and in whatever amounts you want to improve the look.
You'll know it when you see it.
Here are three pictures that show this technique on other parts of our armor.They're bigger damage spots so the chipped or broken edge effect is more apparent.
With these I worked around the entire area of each damage spot.
Remember.....Keep the blade perpendicular to the line of the paint as you go around. You'll get away from that liquid mask look to a look of much more natural damage.
These two pictures somehow were swept in with the others when I posted so I"ll make a couple of comments.....
I found that the kill stripe stencil was the hardest to use.Probably because getting the pattern off of a curved surface distorted the spacing between stripes. It's best to mask evenly spaced stripes on your own helmet. This probably isn't news to anyone just the only major change I had to make to the stencils.
Rangefinder ear piece.....Wondering if anyone else noticed that in Post ESB Helmet pictures that the upper back half of the ear piece appears to be gray or silver and blends with the yellow tone at the top of the piece. In any case I painted ours that way. Just an observation.
These two extreme close ups do show how the extra edge work gets rid of a lot of the liquid mask look. In person the weathering seems pretty natural to me. At least it was fun to do.
