Sunday 13 July 2014

Second colour is down

Masking is done with silly putty, because it easily conforms to the contour of the kit, can be shaped anyway you want and is incredibly easy to remove afterwards. The gaps in between are filled with masking tape. I prefer to use regular painter's tape where possible, because it's a lot cheaper per meter than the Tamiya tape.
Then again, the Tamiya tape is THE best tape for straight lines. Regular tape doesn't burnish down as well and paint is more prone to bleeding under the edge.


After the problems last time painting the panel centers (I'm sure you noticed the huge overspray), I decided to give the smaller nozzles on my Aztek another try. I have been experimenting with them in the past, with mediocre to bad results. They're not intended for acrylics - according to the manual - but how else will I do some finer work?
Past experiments always ended with a non-spraying nozzle, requiring several minutes each time to get it going again. I'm not known for my patience, so those experiments were quickly halted. Many months later, I may try again, as was the case yesterday.
To prevent clogging I thinned the paint really well (even though Vallejo is supposed to be usable unthinned) and gave it a go. It was actually too thin to cover the panel centers up close, because the paint was spidering away, but from a longer distance, it worked remarkable well and kept on spraying for the entire session. A victory in one field, but it does mean there's no recognizable shading in the green area.

I'll try to fix it with some post-shading (i.e. going over the panel centers in a slightly lighter version of the paint) and follow up with a very thin coat of the grey misted all over to blend it all together. This is a widely used method to remove contrast between camouflage colours, but something I haven't been able to pull off yet. I'm feeling confident though, so wish me luck ...



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