Personally I don't work with a firm plan in mind when I do a paint job. I like to stay pretty loose and let the plane (lines of the plane) tell me what will work best. I have in the past used templates to lay out my design, but don't anymore. The way I lay out designs is to just start laying out 1/8 inch tape to see how the pattern (design) flows. If it doesn't look right, I just pick the tape up and lay it back down again. What I thought originally was going to be the best layout, in almost all cases requires tweaking. The way I look at it is, "tape is temporary, paint isn't".

I find the 3M 1/8 inch tape the best for what I do. I usually use one to two rolls per plane. Again, this tape should be available in most every country.

http://www.coastairbrush.com/search....=&stype=&scat=

By the way, don't get to hung up on a design. I did what I thought was going to be a beautiful scheme on a Proteus. I had the wings and stabs done and had about half of the fuselage painted. I stopped and said to myself "this just isn't going to work". I literally had to sand off and white out the fuselage and start all over with a totally different scheme. Not wanting to start all over on the wings and stabs, I worked backwards, coming up with a fuselage that would work with the wings. In about a day I was back up and running with a better design than I had in the first place.