Take your inspiration from the nature around you.
Fashion is a subjective thing, both situational and regional in flavor. While some enthusiasts delight in mile-deep paint jobs and chalk-mark correct restorations, some like their custom touches to be a little more purposeful in nature. Camouflage paint jobs can be just as stylish and visually fascinating as anything from well-known car designers Chip Foose or Troy Trepanier, but don't carry the stigma of pretension that marks many more high-dollar efforts. And the best part--this "masking" technique is so simple and cheap that you could even afford to change your colors with the seasons.
Instructions
1. Take a picture of your local wooded area with a digital camera to use as inspiration and as a reference. Print the photo out to an 8x10. Take it with you to the hardware store when you buy paint.
2. Buy the paint. Several companies make specialized camouflage paints in an array if colors if you want spray-ready paint. If you want custom colors and are set up with a compressor and spray gun, take your photo to hardware or paint stores to buy custom, color-matched, flat exterior house paint.
3. Wash and hand-sand your vehicle with 400-grit sandpaper until the surface loses all glossiness. Follow with a thorough 220-grit sanding.
4. Cover all the windows, lights, license plates and anything else you don't want painted with plastic wrap. Use the dull side of your utility knife blade to push the plastic wrap into the tight seams around the windows and tail lights, then flip the blade over to cut away excess plastic. Use painters tape and silicone RTV to cover anything the plastic won't stick to.
5. Cover, in random fashion, the vehicle with stripes swirls, and slashes of flat black and the darkest brown you have. Cover every inch of the vehicle with these random patterns, but put more dark toward the bottom than the top. This makes up the color of your background "branches."
6. Hold a handful of various branches and twigs up against your vehicle's body. Hold a can of the darkest green you have (hunter green works) about 1 foot from the branches. Spray a light coat of paint over the branches. The approach to masking is completely randomly, turning the branches and spraying in different directions every two seconds or so. Let your inner modern artist out to play.
7. Reuse the branches and spray with a slightly lighter green color (olive drab is a good choice), but don't use as much as the first coat. Make another light pass with a pale yellow or tan to highlight your branches for depth and realism.
8. Grab your leafy branches and repeat the painting procedure with your second (somewhat lighter) green. Keep your branches pointing up. Repeat with gray and bright green paint.
9. Make another pass with flat black, but hold the can about 3 inches closer to create an intense shadow effect. Make another close, but light, pass with tan and a very bright (even day-glow) green.
10. Make a few light passes with your dark green, medium green, brown and flat black using random woodland objects as masks. Suggestions include flowers, moss and pieces of bark.
11. Use a paint brush soaked in flat black paint and then brown to flick random, horizontal slashes of dots near the bottom of your vehicle.
Related posts
Blend into your environment with camo paint.Camo paint is created by layering three to four shades of paint onto a surface to help the object blend into a natural environment. This paint effect ca...
Primary colors are red, yellow and blue. Every other paint color that we use is derived by mixing these three paint colors in some way or another. Brown is one color that you can create by mixing...
Exterior paint can add value to your home.When choosing paint colors for the exterior of your home, look for colors that will highlight interesting design features, while simultaneously diminishin...
Learning to mix your own paint colors is a useful skill for any painter. Not only does this practice allow you to save money on paint, it can improve your art by allowing you a wider variety of co...
Liven up a laundry room with cheerful colors.You may not think of your laundry room as a blank canvas for trendy paint colors, but because it's a small room, it's an appropriate space to try out p...
