There will be a lot of text and photos on this post, so be forewarned.
I greatly admire the craftsmanship of the artists on this board. I use Chuck's chest emblems, and have one of his cosplay cowls, and they're great - I have one of Alex's Bat Shields, and it's amazing - I have one of Renato's utility belts, and I love it - and I have two of Will's excellent cowls. But there's always been one thing about the second cowl I bought from Will that sort of bothered me. Whatever paint he used on the first mask, he used something else for the second one, and the black is not as intense - it's sort of grey. And the forehead wasn't quite as high on the second one as on the first one. So, after a lot trepidation, and experimentation, I decided to take my chances and re-paint the second cowl.
Will's cowls are covered with jumbo spandex, so I did a lot of various paint samples on spandex. LOTS of failures! There was always at least one thing wrong with the paint - if the color was good, the coverage was bad; if it covered well, it cracked; etc, etc. I finally settled on Neopaque fabric paint, available at one of my local art stores. The black was very saturated and flexible, but it was a little thin, so I had to paint on multiple coats, and it was glossy, so I had to use the old art school trick of adding talcum powder to it to matte it down. Once I had the technique down to my satisfaction, I taped off the area of the cowl that I wanted to add paint to.
The real trick was bringing my new paint up to the level of Will's so the paint would be even. I painted 5 or 6 layers onto the new area, and for the last couple, I lightly sanded where the two areas met to try to blend it better.
Then I painted a final layer that covered my new paint and Will's, carefully painting around Will's eyebrow and nose lines.
It's not 100% - if you look really closely, you can see the line where the two different paint sections meet, but overall, I consider it a great success. The higher forehead is much more to my liking, and the deeper black color is a big improvement. Hope this was interesting to some of you do-it-yourselfers out there. Cheers!
RRR
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
