Checker Plate 2

After grinding your surface lightly and priming it with acrylic paint (in this case: white aluminium RAL 9006), go ahead and fake a couple of "stress marks". In order to achieve this, paint the surface quickly from right to left with a large brush using a little bit of black paint. The brush strokes shouldn't be too intense. You may first try it out on a separate sheet of paper.

After that lightly spray over these lines with the background color in order to soften them a bit. This layer of paint should be left to dry for about 15 minutes before you go over to the next step.

Your surface is now prepared for your stencil. If you only want to create certain areas of checker plating, I advise you to use adhesive stencils. In this case, a skull is being sprayed which is encircled by a kind of studded strap.

Position your Checker Plate 2 stencil on your painting surface and mark it on one side (cf. step 9). This way, if your stencil slides out of place, you can always position it correctly again.

First prepare the shading with diluted black (50% water).

Avoid spraying too close to the stencil. This way the stream of air won't lift it. Your pattern will stay where it should be, and it won't "blur".

From time to time, you may remove the stencil and check whether the contrast to the background color is strong enough.

Now remove the checker plate stencil completely and spray over the whole motif very lightly with diluted black.

Place the checker plate stencil on the surface again, moving it 1 mm up. You can align it perfectly using the mark applied before.

For the next step, spray some white (c. 70% opaque), until you are satisfied with the contrast. After that, spray a thin layer of pearly white in order to achieve a metallic effect.

In order to simulate reflections on the "metal sheet", unevenly spray a bit of white across your motif. Once you are satisfied with your contrasts of light and shadows, the checker plate part is done and you may turn to creating the rest of your picture, if you wish.