On top of my drawing, I taped up a section of Avery vinyl to make my stencil. There are several ways to transfer a drawing onto your masking material, but for this job I did it the old-fashioned way... simple tracing with a pencil. Pencil over vinyl can smear, so I took care not to rest my hand on my work as I traced.


Using a new #11 blade in my X acto and a self-healing cut- ting mat, I cut out just the outline of the eagle, so I wound up with something that looked like a pencil sketch sticker. A sharp blade is important, as a dull blade will stretch the vinyl as it cuts, especially on a cutting mat. This ensures a nice clean edge.


I put several loops of automotive masking tape on the back of my eagle cutout and placed it on the fairing exactly where I wanted my final painting to be. This acted as a guide for placing the rest of the vinyl for my stencil. Since I was trying to lay flat material on a curved surface, I needed to lay the mask in portions. Taking the piece of vinyl I cut from around the eagle tracing (which will be my outline stencil), I sliced it into portions at points where it would be easy to realign. I then removed the backing and butted each portion up against the taped on eagle. I pressed the vinyl down from the butted edge outward to remove the bubbles. Once all the pieces were in place around the out- side, I removed the cutout eagle from the center. I taped off all the seams between the stencil pieces and masked off the rest of the exposed fairing with heavy newsprint. (Seams between stencil pieces are indicated with red in the photo.) This method of butting up the stencil mask to your cut out piece ensures that the big hole in the middle of your stencil (your image) doesn’t get distorted when you lay the vinyl down.In a 3 oz. airbrush bottle, I mixed up a small amount of Auto Air 4201 Brite White with just enough 4003 Reducer to produce a chocolate milk-like con- sistency. (To retain opacity, it should be just thin enough to shoot through the airbrush without speckling or excessive tip drying.) Working in light layers and heat setting with a hairdryer in between, I used a Paasche VL3 (hooked up to a SilAire compressor at 40 PSI) to lay a thin base of white over the original black of the fairing until I had a light grey fill for the eagle. This took about 3 passes. I needed it to be a midtone, just light enough to show a pencil mark. I then lined up my original tracing paper drawing to the masking stencil outline and taped it in place. I slid a sheet of graphite trans- fer paper underneath the drawing and taped that in place as well. Using just enough pressure to transfer my marks, I traced the major elements onto the fairing, such as the eye, nostril placement, feather outlines, etc. for painting refer- ence. I didn’t want to press too hard, for two reasons. Some


brands of transfer paper will leave a waxy residue with the pencil mark that will repel paint. Also, pushing too hard can etch/scratch the white mist coat. If the little indents created catch any overspray, they will show up loud and clear later on.


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