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The best advantage we have with kits windows, is that the part that needs to be painted is usually frosted. This means that a pencil will write on the frost, but not on the transparent part

So we take out a pencil, and draw a line on the frosted part, around the transparent section. The line should be a little wide, same as mine. This will make it visible through the masking tape once it’s attached

Now we install the masking tape. For this job, I always use the Tamiya one. It lets you see the pencil well once installed and has good adhesion. If more than one strip of tape is used, always overlap each strip, and not make them next to each other. This will help you remove the tape at one go in the next steps

With the tape in place, I now use a pen to draw a line onto the pencil line visible through the tape. If the pencil line is quite wide, it’s important to draw the inner part of it, where the frosted part begins.

Now, carefully remove the masking tape in one piece from the window, and slowly cut out the line you just did to get your new masking template. It’s very important not to cut the masking tape in place with a blade. This will scratch the windows permanently and leave you with an ugly mark after you remove the masking tape. Believe me, I’ve done this mistake once!

Next step is to remove the pencil markings we did earlier. Use a soft rubber here and remove all of it. Don’t use those harsh rubbers intended to try to remove ink, they will scratch the transparent part and I'm sure you don’t want that!

With the pencil removed, we can now install our new masking template

If more templates are needed, perform the same procedure as before. Here, I’m making the rear side windows for the Fujimi EK9 Civic

With all the windows masked, it’s now time to continue working with your preferred method to paint or airbrush the windows. I prefer airbrushing them with Tamiya X-18

For me, after installing all the masking templates, I mix some Tamiya X-18 with acrylic thinner and airbrush them with 3 light coats until the black is dark enough

At this point, I also add the tinting where necessary. For the Civic EK9, I tinted all 3 rear windows. So after laying down the X-18, I removed the respective masks and airbrushed the Tamiya smoke using the same procedure as explained in the Tinting Windows Tutorial

And that’s all. All that remains is to remove the masking tape and admire your newly detailed windows