Decal Failure - Freehand Success

I was excited to try out a technique for applying transfers using MircoSol and MircoSet that I had found on a blog. The technique first has you apply floor polish (Future Shine) to the area to make it very smooth and prevent air bubbles. The second step is to start soaking the transfer and apply some MicroSet to the area once the floor polish dries. Next you apply the transfer and start painting on MicroSol to the edges to erase the lines. After it dries you cut thru any air bubbles and repeat until it looks right then you apply more floor polish to seal.

Sounded great but didn't work for me. I think the problem is the curvature of the surface - I've seen lots of people online have had problems with shoulder pads. I tried cuts so that it would curve into place but I just ended up destroying the decal. I tried working on the larger terminator shoulder plate but still some of the edges stuck up and trying to press them down eventually destroyed it.

So I went back to my freehand technique which actually I'm pretty proud of. First applying a black circle with a horizontal bar on top, I then draw the Ultramarines symbol in gray over the top. Next I apply blue to "erase" the black in the middle. Finally I apply grey+white and then white highlights to give it depth and it turns out pretty good. For the terminator I skipped the black and did not do the erase step and that turned out ok too but it was a lot harder, the black helps give you a target for freehand drawing the "u".

Finally, for fun I copied a skull pattern I saw on the transfer sheet and I was surprised how well it turned out. Basically I drew a circle in white+grey and connected two "bubbles" on the bottom for eye sockets. The gap between the bubbles was the nose and then I finished with some vertical strokes for teeth. Last, some white on the eyebrow ridge for a subtle highlight.

Well, I have a lot of MicroSet and MicroSol now.

The decal looks ok in this picture but you can see it got chipped on the interior top left edge.  You can't see the lifting due to the curvature but it eventually caused it to peel off.

Black base and freehand painted 'U' in gray.  It is a bit wide and off but the next step cleans that up.

"Erasing" the middle with blue, usually always improves the shape too.

The Terminator was harder since I didn't apply the black or the "erase" step but it turned out ok.  Better than the decal always falling off.



Freehand skull turned out pretty good!