Here’s an example of when this technique is necessary. And unfortunately you see it every day:
There are bolt head, acorn nuts, and other sorts of hardware on the surface of the model. But you want to paint them some shade of metal, so you get out your finest paint brush and give it your best shot. What happens? More often than not it looks good from two feet away, but if you look more closely it looks like ass.
Other the metal color just touches the top surface of the hardware, neglecting the sides, or it spills out around the hardware, onto what should just be the surface of the model. In the second case pin washing might hide your sins, but I personally find a nice dark ring of wash around every single bolt head to be just a tad…unrealistic.
The fix is quite simple, in theory anyway:
Remove the bolt head. Make suitable substitutes, which are often better detailed anyway. Place your bolt heads onto a piece of blue tape. Paint the whole thing, being careful not to let paint settle near the bottom of the bolt. When dry, transfer your perfectly painted bolt to the surface of the model.
As luck would have it, I’ve started a motorcycle thread today that will require doing exactly the method I described.
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