Painting stuff

[Spasm]

The colour is now rubbed away to give a worn look. Don't get too carried away here, less is more. Just when you think "I'll just rub a bit more away here" then don't.

Fill your jam jar with some clean water and dip in the corner of your scourer pad. Rub gently into the paint where it would be worn when handling over many years, where it's been thrown onto surfaces, where the owner looped his chin strap around the front and where he's bashed it in bunkers and scratched pushing through brambles. Use some kitchen paper to wipe away the wet and then dry. Remember to do the inside of the helmet as well. You can rub quite a bit of paint off of the rim - go look at an original and see how it's worn away.

Once it's about right, and dry, spray on another intercoat of lacquer to protect what you've done

Edited December 12, 2014 by Spasm

[Spasm]

Now we've got to get the colour of the helmet correct for what we want. In this case we're looking for an early war standard brown colour. Old helmets are all multi coloured where they've worn in some places and have even been re-painted or camo paint applied.

Here we use thin glazes to change the colour slightly on each coat and build up slowly to the desired effect. As the coats are going on wet they can be wiped away if it's not going too well. Be brave and play with colours until you get what you want.

Add a squeeze of white to the colour still in your old mixing pot, add some more water and mix thoroughly. Apply a wet coat and dab most away with some kitchen roll paper.

As you've applied an intercoat of lacquer you can play around rubbing and dabbing, even taking a complete coat off again until you get what you want.

Again the colours look wrong through the camera indoors so there's some more outside once dry.

Edited December 12, 2014 by Spasm

[Spasm]

Put a blob of each of your colours onto your mixing plate and apply further coats of dark to tone everything down. See how the glazing coats are letting all the colours below show through. This gives a varied deep look across the helmet.

Once you are happy then get another coat of lacquer onto the helmet.

[Spasm]

Some wearing now needs to be applied. Take a small piece of grade 80 (or thereabouts) sandpaper and get stuck into the helmet. Use small strokes in every direction to give a well worn look to the lacquer coat. Work around the rim quite hard to remove paint down to the metal. The helmet takes on a sort of dusty look. Take this stage slowly using small strokes of the sandpaper or it'll look unnatural.

Take the paint off of the rivets and on the edges of the chin strap clips to look like they've been worn away.

Edited December 12, 2014 by Spasm

[Spasm]

Go back to your mixing plate and mix a watery black/umber mix. Splash that onto the helmet and let it partly dry. This flows into the scratches you've just made over the whole helmet. Dab and wipe it away to give the desired look. Dabbing takes the whole colour off in part while wiping leaves colour in stamps and scratches. Take your time working until you slowly work the colours on the helmet to where you want it.

Sorry the pictures are a bit shaky but the colours goes on quickly and I'm trying to dab it off before it dries while taking pictures with my left hand.

[Spasm]

Here's the helmet outside so you can see the colours better. Have a look at how I've sanded into the scratches to expose metal in some small areas working down into the very first colour that was put on. It all comes together now making the helmet look worn and old.

Edited December 12, 2014 by Spasm

[Spasm]

Back to the now clean mixing plate and some clean water in the jam jar. Squeeze out a small blob of Burnt Sienna. This is a great rust colour applied straight.

Paint along the edge of the rim, around rivets, the top bolt hole and around the chin strap clips. Where there's small pin holes of exposed metal across the helmet apply little dots of this colour. Rub the colour edges to blend and dab on straight out of the tube on the little dots of pretend rust.

[Spasm]

Once all looks good. You may need to work a bit on the maker's stamp with some black and wiping off to expose them so that they are easier read. Then get another coat of lacquer on as this is now complete.

[Spasm]

Here it is all done with the lacquer dried. Also the detail of under the rim of the maker's stamp.

This could be where you've finished as you only wanted to repaint the helmet. Just re-build, remembering that you'll need to do a bit of painting on the crown bolt to match.

All done for today. In total I've spent about a full day in the preparation sanding, protection and then the base colouring.

I'll need to take some more photos to show the correct colour, now I look at it the photos make it look too red.

The next bit will be getting detailed paintings onto the helmet as a display piece. Same place, same channel in a day or so. See you there....

Edited December 13, 2014 by Spasm

[Spasm]

I've taken some more photos this morning that show the colour a bit better.

[Tony]

Steve mate, in post 28 you say mix a blob of each, do you mean each colour in your photo or a blob of all six colours?

[Spasm]

Tony

Ah yes, sorry. Not too clear was I.

I put a small blob of all of the colours on the plate. Form a puddle of water on the plate and then drag a weenie part of one blob, or some of the blobs into the mix to produce a glaze. Brush that onto the helmet and see if its giving the desired effect. If not, wipe off and/or add another glaze by dragging some more colour in with your brush. You can see if you look at the remaining blobs in post #30 that I've only used weenie parts of the blobs. Mix a glaze with the colour/s you feel the helmet needs, if it's too light add some umber and black, too red add some green, if it's too dark then lighten up etc etc. You can build up each glaze and dry before adding another. It may take quite few glazes until you get what you want. If it's all going wrong you can use some water and wipe off the glazes and start over.

[Spasm]

Spent a few hours on t'tinternet doing a bit of research and collecting pictures

These are the few I've whittled it down to

A crest/badge for all 3 services involved in Operation Dynamo. there's not really anything officially WW2 so I've drawn my own based on the MOD crest

Some newspaper headlines

A King's crown

Some photos

A still from the film Dunkirk

The flag that the little boats are allowed to fly and their badge

A Dunkirk veteran's badge

The Dunkirk Medal

The inscription from the Dunkirk memorial

These have all been scaled to a size that fits on the helmet

[Chris Boonzaier]

You are a God!!!

[Spasm]

Well.......thank you very much

[Spasm]

Now to get the pictures onto the helmet.

Do some careful measuring and mark the centre line of the helmet. Use a floppy tape measure robbed from the other half's sewing box - it's better at measuring around bends and corners.

I nearly always start on the crest/badge that I've decided to use on the front. In this case the drawing of the three services with a King's crown above. Instead of colouring the RAF Eagle, Army Swords and Navy Anchor I think they'll be better as a sort of brass colour to match the crown.

The drawing/print has already been scaled to fit the helmet. Use a big pencil and cover the back of the picture so that it can be traced. I used to draw this stuff straight onto the helmet but it took ages and ended up with the same result. No need to learn how to draw, just trace the drawing with a ball point pen. The pencil then marked onto the helmet is easily removed even by rubbing with your hand so be careful to keep away from the pencil while doing your first bit of painting.

I go over the pencil with white. This may take a few coats and I build up the picture in the same way as doing an underpainting with an airbrush. You can see that the details are lighter where they need to be.

[Spasm]

Then I get a base of Yellow Ochre over the white. Then get a shadow around the badge using a wash of black. This won't want to stick to the lacquer so rub gently with your finger through the black being careful not to lift any of the adjacent painting off. It'll go on nicely then.

Mix up washes of brown/black/yellow getting darker and darker to outline and bring out the picture. Highlight areas where they need it. This doesn't happen quickly but allows the tones to be built up slowly. Darkening and highlighting over and over until happy. More and more detail can be had but this is a helmet to be seen as a whole so too much detail, and therefore time, can be wasted. Then use white to highlight the bright spots. Make these spots a bit bigger so that they appear to shine. Highlights can be overdone, maybe this badge has a bit too much but it can always be glazed later on to match the helmet.

Edited December 16, 2014 by Spasm

[Spasm]

And on and on..... take it outside to check all looks ok in the daylight. If happy, then get a light spray of lacquer on it to protect as it'll get rubbed and scratched during the rest of the helmet painting.

[Robin Lumsden]

Wonderful work !!

[TacHel]

Even after reading this, I have no clue how to "wash"...

Looks awesome bud!

[Spasm]

Robin and Frank - thank you Gents.

Frank, you've either tried a wash on a painting - which came out rubbish - or it's me not explaining what a wash is. A wash is a weenie bit of colour in loads of water. Even thinner than ink. When applied it runs and drips off of the surface so some mopping up kitchen roll is required otherwise you'll get a punch in the ear from the Admin Staff for painting the carpet.

If applying to a painting, say a water colour, then the area you want to wash is painted first with clear water to make the paper wet. Then apply your already mixed wash colour and move around with a big soft brush. On helmets etc, I'm trying to change the colour slowly. I don't put on the clear water, I just put on a wash (or glaze), dry it with the hot gun, and see what I've got. I then add another wash, maybe of a different colour, dry it, and look to see what I've got. I compare to the colour I'm trying to achieve (if I've got a sample or what I'm imaging in my head). And again apply another wash to get to where I want to be. Sometimes I can over do it and want to take the last wash off, this is where an intercoat of lacquer is handy otherwise all of the wash layers come off.

Acrylic paints tend to lift when applying a coat on top and dry darker than when wet. This is just something to get used to through trial and error.

Always try to work from light colours to darker colours. It's very difficult to go lighter. Which is why I give each element to be painted on the dark helmet a base of white which is then darkened to the finished item. Exactly like doing a custom bike tank with an airbrush. So anyone wanting Harley Davidson, flames and an Eagle on an M1 helmet, urrrgh, let me know.

Go get your brushes out of the shed.

Edited December 17, 2014 by Spasm

[Tony]

Going back to the base coats, I've just done my MKII, it's come out overall far darker than yours so maybe I didn't have enough water in the mixture. Would you just leave it or strip the paint and start again?

A little hint for anyone using a heat gun, while preoccupied with drying the helmet you probably won't notice the heat gun power lead taking paint from the mixing plate and depositing it on your work surface

[Spasm]

Tony

Yep, making a mess is all part of the experience. Would be good to have a look at some photos.

My photos may not show the helmet correctly as the colour does look a bit darker in the flesh. You're trying to get something that looks authentic, If it looks ok, and old untouched helmets are pretty dark, then I'd leave it. Not too much problem painting over what you've got using the dark colour as the base. Apply the lightest colour again and then use very watery colours to darken down. Dry each coat until you get the colour you want.

If I was really unhappy then I'd start over. It's been some time but I remember cleaning the paint off of a few before I was getting what I wanted. Acrylic comes off pretty easy with some paint remover under a running tap and a bit of rubbing. Don't be worried about starting over, practise makes whatsit and all that.

Remember you're sneaking up on the colour, not trying to get it in as few coats as possible. Keep the paint thin and use plenty of dabbing off to get a worn look. It'll come, but watch the carpet with all the splashing about.

[Tony]

I don't have any photos of the mess but here's the helmet. It's a very dark brown and looks ok to me only I don't know if I'm going to get the correct finish with such a dark (compared to yours) base.

So, apply burnt umbra on its own then mix together a bit more lamp black and burnt umbra, making sure it's watery and get dabbing.

[Spasm]

Is this the finished helmet or just the base colour? Assuming it's the base colour and you are going to start with the lighter colours (ie at post #24) then it looks ok to me.

If it's the finished helmet then yes, it looks like it needs lightening up. Again, go back to post #24.

Keep going it looks pretty good to me. And yes, keep the darkening paint glazes very thin and dab away.

Edited December 17, 2014 by Spasm