Small update today but a new technique for me!
The next step for the flight deck was to paint the arresting cables marks on the deck:
http://navysite.de/cvn/cvn71_2.jpgAs you can see, there are rusty lines under the cables. These lines are not well defined though, a bit blurred. So for this case masking tape was not enough as it would give very straight borders. Therefore I used a technique common to aircraft builders to obtained blurred borders. I cut the shape of the marks in thin cardboard and placed them where the cables are but not stuck on the deck, rather at 1-2mm from the surface.
This way the paint spray from the airbrush is "guided" and does the shape I want but with blurred borders:
It appears a bit too red at the moment but I still have to do the black weathering so it will be "smoother" eventually.
In the process I damaged the elevator contour decal, which forced me to try another new technique as I ran short of the proper lines in GMM's sheet
Another reason to
paint all markings!
I'm actually quite glad of this because it showed me that printing decals on white paper is not too big a problem, as long as the background is fairly uniform. I simply drawed the shape in Illustrator and applied a dark grey background to the drawing. The extra lines are for the hangar. I made a more decals, notably including parts of Rouyax' Enterprise hangar sheet , I will post more on it soon.
This way, even if I cut the decal not perfectly along the edge it is not too visible, especially after some weathering.
More on it tomorrow, and maybe the hangar will start to be advanced enough for me to show a bit of it