It wasn’t enough to have drawn the damn thing in the first place, you then had to go over it again with a surgical scalpel and cut out masks. Once the masks were cut out, then and only then, could you start laying down the colour with the airbrush.
A mask, is a stencil. Banksy uses them all of the time to create his art. The benefit for him is that they reduce the amount of time he has to hang around looking anonymous. That wasn’t a particular issue I had, but spray on its own does produce blurry edges and that was a problem for precise engineering illustrations or fancy chrome lettering.
So we buy this masking film on the roll (Frisk brand incase you were wondering). It comes attached to a backing paper from which you peel it off, being very careful to avoid it sticking to you or itself. Easy enough for small details but a handful for large areas.
Once removed from the backing paper the next step was to lay it flat over the artwork and apply it without introducing creases or air bubbles. There were always air bubbles.
You then meticulously cut the mask out of the film using a scalpel, being careful not to push too hard. Cogs and meshing teeth were particularly tedious.
This film has a slightly tacky side so that it didn’t get blown to the other side of the studio when you point the airbrush at it. Also it wasn’t supposed to remove your paint when you pulled it off, but it did. This really hurt when it destroyed a lovely smooth gradient.
There would be no choice but to find your original mask, you kept it right?.. and do it again. Each time building up layer upon layer of paint, making it increasingly difficult to work with.
Times were changing though, Photoshop, Cmd Z and layers were just around the corner.