I'll be building a schoolyard size Citabria soon, all stick and tissue (light silkspan) and dope.

What would be a good way to paint on the stars and such on the wing and tail? Is it possible to use masking tape without fear of pulling up the covering? What is the best approch to painting this kind of design?

use the blue painters tape it is less tacky.seal the slkspan and then paint on the white and then mask and paint the blue,spray if you can.

Or cut the designs out of dark tissue and dope them on. Paint does get heavy.

To avoid having the blue paint bleed under the tape, paint the whole thing white first, then mask off the areas to be painted blue - But - before you apply the blue paint, hit it with a coat of white first and let it dry, THEN apply the blue.

That way, if any paint bleeds under the tape, it will be white paint which won't show against the already white background.

Thanks guys for the tips...I've been off brousing and see that there is a technique now where silver mylar is first glued and shrunk on as covering, and then colored tissue is then cut and pasted onto the opaque silver mylar (which backs up the color of the tissue) with 50/50 dope. A two stage process but they say its lighter than trying to achive it with color dope if you dont mind the extra work. With using heat you can take out twists too, or washout.

It might be the best way to approch this one...and i would go as far as making a frisket anyways...just as a cutting guide for the tissue. After all everything is symetrical, just flip to the other hand. If it wasn't for the pinstriping in this scheme, it would be just a simple matter of one sheet of frisket for the design. The pinstripe feature is the grabber...it has to be it own template, and not an easy one at that to cut out being so narrow all the way around.

What about tissue over a base of 00 grade silkspan? I have a bunch of that.

Decals sure do sound tempting in this case, waterslide to save weight (best thinking I have), and wouldnt that be crazy putting on one big huge waterslide like that! Decals arent really an option i dont think for me cause of that cash thing again. I'm planning on making more than just one of these so I'm gonna have to streamline.