Hello:
Well, after cleaning and re-priming the tank, I gave air
brushing another try. This time I used Badger brand frisket sheets for masks.
I decided to start small, and began with the model's turret. This time
everything worked without a hitch. When I laid down the green coat, I worked
with a thicker mixture and with a lighter spray. The work was slow, but it was
worth it. The friskets held up nicely and none of the paint was damaged when I
removed the masks. Today, I'm going to move on the the rest of the tank. After
that is complete, I plan on giving a similar cammo scheme to my GeoHex resin
vehicles, my HG minis (both RAFMM and DP9), then a new Vor Ares battlesuit
fig.
This is going to be fun.
OH! While I'm on the topic, does anyone have suggestions on airbrushing small
figs like DSII vehicles and DP9 gears?
Marcus Seifertius declaimed:
> OH! While I'm on the topic, does anyone have suggestions on
Well, this isn't exactly airbrushing, and I haven't done it yet so results not
guaranteed, but this is what I'm planning:
Prime and basecoat your vehicle. This is going to be one of the Ba'Das KV
tanks so we'll make it dark metallic purple. Take card stock or similar
material (probably a shoe box lid)
and cut out narrow, closely-spaced slits.
Arrange your vehicles, then put the card over them, not touching but close.
Spray the card with your second color (metallic teal).
I _think_ what will happen is you'll get fuzzy-edged stripes.
Greater distance from vehicle to card means fuzzier
stripes--place them too far apart and your "stripes" will
overlap. I think.
Then pick out details in bronze.
I'll try it out and let you know. Probably August.
> OH! While I'm on the topic, does anyone have suggestions on
Honestly - the difficulty of doing the airbrushing on figs that small
isn't worth the rewards... Paint them by hand, because they're small, the
differences between them and the big ones won't be so obvious. You don't need
to paint them with the same level of detail that you would on a 25mm fig or
RAFM HG fig, so abstracting it a bit and using a brush will be fine. And if
you're looking for feathered edges, just drybrush carefully...
If you're looking to use the airbrush to do basecoats in single colours for
the whole fig, that's ok, and if you're determined to use it to do camo
patterns, practice making small lines on graph paper, and do it free hand.
Masking a fig that small will be insane.
> At 08:30 PM 4/11/00 -0400, you wrote:
Nice idea, but it probably won't work. There's an interesting article on
the Miniatures Page about this -- the author tried half a dozen
different ways to spray stripes onto microarmor. None of them worked.
http://theminiaturespage.com/workbench/?id=24298
He didn't try cardboard, but I have a feeling that the results would be
similar.
John Crimmins murmured:
> Nice idea, but it probably won't work.
Oh, a challenge! I'll have to try it sooner than August.
> At 11:12 PM 4/11/00 -0400, you wrote:
Hey, if it *does* work let us all know! I've tried a variety of quick camo
paint jobs, and have yet to see any of them actually succeed. Being a
fundamentally lazy fellow, the idea appeals to me.
Come to think of it, though, here's another idea that might work. I have
this great stuff called "U Knead It" -- I use it to tack figures down to
popsicle sticks for painting them, to support things when they are being glued
together, etc. (I obtained it from Micro Mark years ago; I'm not sure if it is
still available). It adheres beautifully, and it comes back up without
removing any paint (the sole exception being from the bottom of some Fortress
Figures plastics...that stuff just does NOT like acrylics). If you sprayed a
tank in a base color, and then applied blobs of U Knead It
-- or substitute Blue-Tak, that stuff that's used to hang posters -- and
then sprayed the tank a *different* color.... Add some ink for shading, and
there you are! That should work. It would be a lot quicker than painting the
stripes, and as long as you give the first coat time to dry it shouldn't be a
problem.
I'll have to give this a shot with my next batch of microarmor. Urban camo
scheme, here I come!
> Come to think of it, though, here's another idea that might work. I
I've not done this myself, but I know several people who have used this exact
method, and it works exactly how you would think it is going to. You
put the blue-tac (or equiv) onto the fig after you've painted on the
colour of the area that are going to be covered, and then spray the whole fig
with
what ends up being the main colour. The blue-tac comes right off, and
it works great. Just make sure the first paint coat is dry first. And not just
dry to the touch, but cured. That means a day of drying time for acrylics...
This will work well not just for camoflage schemes - the guys I know
would use it for painting figures which have lots of one colour, but lighter
detail bits that they don't want to spend a lot of time re-basecoating
in
white. They would prime the figure with white, apply the blue-tac to
the areas that they want light coloured, then reprime it black and spray on
the
dark main colour. Taking off the blue-tac, they have the "to be white"
areas still white, and don't require several coats of brushed on white
first to cover the black/dark. The only problem with keeping details
covered like this, particularly on smaller models, is that the blue-tac
stuff isn't a "precision instrument"... It is difficult to get it to cover the
small details and ONLY the small details. So you might need to do some
touching up to the dark area once the blue-tac is removed.
Anyway, this method works.
> Come to think of it, though, here's another idea that might work. I
I've always thought these seemed a bit greasy. I'm sure the next step for some
folks would be to lay down small blobs, then overlay with bigger blobs for a
third spray, to make stepped camo.
My question ends up, and I understand it will have to wait the attempt, will
you have to surface clean again? Course, anyone wanting to clear coat will be
interested in the answer...
The_Beast
> At 07:20 AM 4/12/00 -0500, you wrote:
It shouldn't be a problem. I use the stuff on the bottoms of miniatures, and
it's had no effect on the primer (or the paint) there. No residue, other than
the occasional fragment of the substance. And that's easy
enough to remove -- just press a large blob of the tacky stuff agains
the miniature, and when you pull it away it takes the little bits away with
it.
To tie this into another thread, I'm going to give it a test run on some
Stan Johansen saucer-shaped tanks. They are big enough, and flat
enough, to do a good job on. And I have a lot of them, so it'll give me
another good sized force to play with.
I'll work on it this weekend. I'm going to want to give each coat at least 24
hours to dry, so it's going to take some time. Not as much time as doing it by
hand, though.
Painting Kra'Vak Stripes
Step 1: Order Chinese takeout dinner (General Tso's Chicken by preference) in
an aluminum tray with clear styrene lid.
The lid is about 3/4" high.
Step 2: Eat dinner? No, my 11 year old wolfed it all. Salvage an eggroll.
Step 3: Cut 1/32 to 1/16" wide strips out of the lid, parallel
and spaced about 1/4" apart. Use a razor knife, and make sure
the strips are substantially longer than the ship is wide (I
neglected this important consideration). I cut three strips
out for this attempt.
Step 4: Position a KV Hunter cruiser under the lid so the
cut-outs will produce stripes in the desired direction.
Step 5: Spray.
The stripes turned out exactly as I wanted, i.e. the edges are "fuzzy", it was
easy, and I can make a standard template and put the same pattern on all my KV
clan ships (except for the strikers and other tiny little ships, one stripe
would cover them).
I primed them Krylon grey to start with. The base coat is
burgundy metal flake--which I'm not totally pleased with, it's
lighter than I really wanted. I found a dark purple acrylic, but it's not
metallic, so I'll add a little liquid gold to that and see how it works for
the next one; I'll also try priming with black instead of grey and see what
that does.. The stripes are pearlized teal, from a model car paint rack; it
was perfect as far as color, I just wish it was acrylic instead of enamel so
it would dry today. I'll finish it tomorrow with a light wash of bronze. One
of the guys at work has a digital camera, so with luck I can post a photo next
week.