From: Flak Magnet <flakmagnet@t...>
Date: 02 May 2002 09:50:20 -0400
Subject: Re: [OT] Airbrushes - Long, but there's a picture!
> On Wed, 2002-05-01 at 16:41, Allan Goodall wrote: Most of the time, I would use water-soluble artist's or calligrapher's ink as a last step. Do the black lining as normal, if I make a mistake, I can wet my finger or a sponge or something and clean the mistake off since it's water-soluble. If I REALLY hose the job, a quick rinse under the tap will clean it all off without affecting the water-fast acrylics I use. > Normally, when painting without an airbrush, I'd use a wash or I'd do However you > also get a "stain" outside of the crease where the water and paint Using the same techniques works just fine, and as long as you use repeatable colors (by either keeping a "recipe card" for each model or by painting unmixed colors) you ought to be able to blend or feather dry-brushing with your airbrush work, as long as it's consistent, you should to be able to make it look right. Unrelated to airbrushing: If you use distilled water to water down your paints for washes, you ought to not have the "stain" from a wash quite so bad. It's the extra minerals in normal tap water that cause the stain. See above about correcting a mistake while black lining (re: using water-soluble inks). > Is there any way to do washes or other details in the crevices of a Part of doing some of the minature painting with an airbrush eliminates/reduces the need for washes on large sections of your model. With 6mm scale, I've found it eliminates dry-brushing even. Take a peek at: http://www.geocities.com/flakmanget72/pics/Humber3Views.jpg This is a composite view of a 6mm armored car from WWII, painted almost entirely with an airbrush. First I glued the underside of the model to a nail-head to make it easier to handle and rotate. A base coat of a dark green drab was airbrushed over the entire model and then a coat of interior green (testor's acrylic) was "dusted" from above. When I dust a model for the purpose of highlighting, I thin the paint a bit extra, no so much to reduce coverage, because that's what you control with the airbrush, but to keep the paint droplets from drying on the way to the model, perhaps using a retarder would work just as well, but I don't have any. Note how the dusting settled on the upper surfaces and not so much on the sides or on the overhangs. The lighting on this model at the time the photograph was taken was from 5 different points totalling *quick math* 750watts, so any shading you see is the result of paint shading, not from lighting and actual shadows. I think the effect is most noticable in these areas: Front view: The driver's viewport, just under the barrel of the gun but above the white star. Side view (pointing right): The recessed panel between the wheels, under the two horzontal lines on the main body. Side view (pointing left): The same recessed panel, the shovel between the turred and the recessed panel. Note that I haven't painted the shovel, but I may go back and pick them out with a black wash and a brown wash. The only areas that are not painted with an airbrush are the wheels and the star, which is a decal. The white on the front wheel of the right-most view is the result of superglue "fogging", something I'll be going back over sometime... How well this applies to other vehicles and larger scales depends on how strong the relief is on the model. The basic technique of basecoating with a dark color and dusting it from above with a lighter shade of it can apply to any model with a monochromatic paint scheme, and with some follow-on brush work, it can be applied to any model. A translucent dusting of gray or light tan after a camouflage pattern has been applied can do the same kind of shading/highlighting if you're careful and have gotten used to the technique. For 6mm camouflage, I plan on trying this: Basecoating with a medium shade of gray, then dusting with very light gray or white. Using inks and washes thinned out but with only controllable amounts on the brush I paint on the camo pattern, layering on dark over lighter colors (like normal camo painting). My hope/theory is that the washes will be translucent enough to allow the highlighting from the airbrush work dhow through while still imparting their colors onto the color-neutral gray base-coat. When I get around to trying this, I'll let you know how it works. Hopefully this was informative, as opposed to boorish. Let me know if you have any other questions... Feedback on the Humber Scout car's paint job would be cool too!