The Foundation of Details

The small details are one of the things that can separate your work from the rest.  Details, though, aren’t always easy, at all. They can be time consuming and they can be frustrating; and there’s often not much forgiveness in the finished painted result.  While there’s no one thing that makes it easy, there are a few guidelines that can help. 

  • Most of the time, the details are last. All the lines in the picture below, are done last. The way the body work ends up on the main sections of the body is what will determine the details lines. So, don’t body work all the lines while you’re working on the main areas, it’ll get sloppy, do them last, when you’re done with all the big sections. 
  • One section at a time.  To get all the lines and details really dialed in, it’s important to have a foundation, a correct surface to work off of. You then just work your way through each area, basing it off of the previous correct section.    Once you have one area established and ‘straight’, it all becomes much easier.  You need something to work off of.  So, one area at a time. 
  • Square it up!  These body lines are hard to body work to begin with, much less making sure they are really dialed in and consistent.  How to solve this?  Everything is made square with sharp corners with body filler.  So every one of these feature lines were completely square at one point.  This allows you to tape off all the lines and make them exactly straight, exactly the right thicknesses, etc.  Thats very difficult to do when everything is rounded. You then use tape to measure and mark where to sand all the corners back to.  This makes the radiuses the same, and everything looks just right.
  • Be patient!  Don’t get ahead of yourself.