viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2630
While not perfect, I was pretty pleased with the outcome.
Recently, I acquired a second-hand cowl, and wanted to share with crafters on the board what I did with THAT cowl.
Let's call it the Hybrid Cowl - I was told by the seller that it was a Chuck shell and Chuck's original lastex fabric, covered and finished by Will Reeb. Two artisans for who I have great respect, so I was excited to get my hands on it. When it arrived, it was clear the cowl had a lot of problems. The biggest was that the fabric had obviously come loose from most of the shell, and the seller had done a bad job of re-positioning it, using some contact cement or another to "tack it down" in places. Since it was still loose in many places, I decided to try to fix it, and with effort, pulled the cover up off the shell everywhere except the face. Using a steamer to sort of re-activate the adhesive still on the shell, I pressed the fabric back in place, and managed to get in on pretty well.
Unfortunately, in the steaming process, I got a little too close to the painted face in one small area, and sort of scorched the paint. So, I decided to re-paint it, especially since, as I cited in my earlier re-painting thread, Will's black is just a little too grey for my taste. But this time, I decided to try to re-paint the brows, too, more in the style of Chuck's cowls.
First, I lightly sanded the painted area with a fine grade sandpaper. To re-paint, I used the same paint I used previously, Jacquard's Neopaque Light Body Acrylic fabric paint, with talcum powder added to it to matte it down. That worked really well - after painting, I couldn't see the line of the original brows at all.
Then, I uploaded a favorite pic of Adam West in a cowl with brows I really like, and in Photoshop, cropped the image and printed up just the brow in what seemed the right scale, based on my Chuck cosplay cowl's dimensions. I cut out the brows, and with rubber cement, lightly pasted them on the Hybrid Cowl to check the size. The size worked out perfectly first go, so I traced that brow template onto blank adhesive-backed stencil material used for fabric painting.
I cut the brows out with an exacto knife, and after making registration marks for positioning on the cowl, pressed them into place.
I used a mix of white, cobalt blue, and neutral grey #5 acrylic paint, again with talcum powder added to matte it down, and with a #0 brush, carefully painted inside the stencils. I laid down two layers of paint to try to make sure the color was uniform, and after a couple of minutes, apprehensively removed the stencils.
Amazingly, there was no bleeding under the stencils at all, and the brows came out perfectly! No touching up at all!
I am SO glad I took on this project! The Hybrid Cowl was in terrible condition, and pretty useless as it was, but now it is one of my favorite pieces. A nice Chuck shell with original lastex fabric, well put together by Will, and now re-finished by me.
Cheers!
RRR
Actually, I think my brows ended up a little over scale, or maybe they just look that way to me because Will's black area tends to be a little smaller than yours.
