Re: Airbrushing Chronicles Part II

>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'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.

Adrian