Re: [OT] Airbrushes - Long, but there's a picture!

On Wed, 2002-05-01 at 16:41, Allan Goodall wrote:
> I was wondering how you did washes or black lining with an airbrush. 
> 
> Lets say you have a vehicle. This vehicle has some neat creases in it
where
> there are doors, hatches, etc. You prime it black. You now airbrush
the
> vehicle. How do you make the creases come out black?

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
a
> freehand black lining. If you do a wash, the dark creases show up.
However you
> also get a "stain" outside of the crease where the water and paint
mixture
> settled. How do you get rid of this stain? Or, if I'm black lining and
I make
> a mistake, how do I go back and touch up the mistake? If I use the
airbrush it
> will fill in the crease I just finished darkening. If I fix it by
hand, I ruin
> the airbrush effect.

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
> figure/vehicle that doesn't mess up the airbrushing if you make a
mistake, or
> get filled in by the airbrush itself if you do it first?

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!

-- 

--Flak Magnet
Hive Fleet Jaegernaught