# How To Paint Straight Letter Graffiti With the Lego and Variator Caps
**Slug:** `/straight-letters-lego-variator-caps`
Straight letters often come down to clean lines and clean fills. This walkthrough uses three: a needle cap to sketch, the Lego cap for lines, and the Variator Fat Cap for fills. The Transversal Fat Cap will work just as well if you don't have a Variator.
Sketch With the Needle Cap
Sketch the letters first with a needle cap. The needle cap gives a thin, controlled line.
Why the Variator Fat Cap for Fills
The Variator or Transversal Fat Cap works well for fills because of its fan spray pattern. The fan distributes paint evenly, so a single pass lays down flat, solid color instead of the hollow, patchy fills a standard fat cap tends to leave. That means fewer passes to cover an area and a cleaner final fill.
Testing New Paint: Gold and Green
I was trying a gold water-based can I'd never used before, and it sprayed a little funny; I think it's the metallic flakes. Water-based metallics tend to be a little strange like that, so the fan pattern didn't show off the way I wanted. With a normal can you'd see how clean that cap covers. The gold was clean enough to cut with, at least.
The green was the surprise. Never used it before either, and it sprayed super clean; really nice.
Lego for Clean Lines
The Lego cap produces clean lines with less effort than many caps, and it handles both thick and thin lines depending on pressure and distance, so there's no need to swap caps to change line weight. Clean lines are achievable with most caps given enough practice; the Lego simply makes them easier to hold.
The Simple Cap Combo
The full setup is three caps: needle cap to sketch, Variator (transversal) fat cap for fast fills, and Lego for lines and everything else. The caps don't do the work for you; they reduce the effort on the clean, repetitive parts so more of your attention goes to the letters themselves.
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Full Transcript
All right, let's do some straight letters with the Lego and the Variator cap, or the transversal fat cap. I'm still going to sketch with the needle cap, though; it'll be pretty small.
Never used this gold water-based can before, so I'm curious how it does. That's not bad; it covers pretty good. Sprays sort of weird, though.
The reason I like the fan caps on most cans; the Variator or transversal fat cap really goes on nice and clean because it has the fan spray pattern. So it doesn't give you those hollow fills that you have to go over a bunch of times with normal fat caps.
This gold's kind of weird; it's not really demonstrating the cap the way I wanted. I'll show you real quick. You see? With normal cans, you see how it covers, really nice. The gold is spraying a little funny, probably because of the metallic flakes, and I've noticed water-based metallics are a little strange.
I've also never used this green, so I'm really hoping it sprays clean. Oh, wow, that's really nice. Actually sprays super cool.
Curious if this gold is clean enough to cut with. Looks like it is.
So you see, Lego is obviously good for clean lines, and you can do thick or thin lines depending on your preference, but you can do it all with one cap. Transversal fat cap, or Variator cap, for fill to get it done fast, and then Lego for everything else.
