Can someone point me in the right direction?

[ThinkingManNeil]

I'm looking for a step-by-step process or tutorial to do a simple repaint for John Woodward's Erco Ercoupe. The only other skin I've successfully done was one for J.E. Narcizo's Cessna 150 Aerobat taildragger, but I've made a real mess of the Ercoupe. When I tried to change the aircraft registration marks on the fuselage all I got was a dark, flat gray texture for the entire fuselage and the registration code was invisible.

What I want to create is a polished metal fuselage and wings that look like painted silver fabric (or even just a simple silver paint appearance since the Ercoupes originally had fabric covered wings but John's Ercoupe really doesn't show a fabric effect) and have the entire empennage and rear fuselage a deep - preferably metallic - midnight blue with the blue coming forward on the fuselage to a diagonal line about one third the fuselage's length and have a small, Canadian registration code in polished metal in the blue painted area on the fuselage forward of the horizontal stabilizer. I also want to repeat the deep blue colour on the wingtips, as an registration code beneath the starboard wing, and in a name for the aircraft as simple noseart.

I should mention that the only image software I have available is the MS Paint program that came installed with my Dell PC that runs on Windows 7. I have an older copy of PhotoShop 7 that my sister, a graphics instructor, gave me a couple of years ago, but it refuses to load for some reason.

Thanks in advance for your advice and suggestions,

Neil H.

[inkworm]

Find a copy of photoshop that works! Or there is a freeware app called Gimp which from what I understand is quite good as a starting point but there may be a bit of a steep learning curve involved to understand the software first.

The real issue with any metallic surface (especially polished) is that you don't so much see the colour of the metal but the reflection and distortions caused by the surface.

[Serval]

I fear there is no "simple" tutorial. Sure we can make it look easy, but there are things you must understand.
And like suggested, get Photoshop elements (costs a few bucks or maybe you got it with some hardware device) or Gimp.
MS paint only will make things very hard on you. The tools it has are too limited to work in an easy way.
Then start with our tutorials about layers, brushes etc. Without understanding them, it will be hard to make/change a repaint.
While following those, just ask here. And show screenshots to show what your problem is. That way we can help you best.