Thank you.Barry,
All looking very nice mate.
Looking good Barry. How do you go about your modulating. Do you do a primer coat followed by panel patches in something darker and then onto main colour over top until you have good coverage but can just see the previous colour underneith?
I have recently arrived at the same conclusion, Barry. And your no-walk line technique is simple, but brilliant. Thanks for the post.Never use a decal when you can mask and paint....
Thanks for the detailed explanation Barry.it is simpler than that. The black primer forms my black basing. Over the primer I spray a light overall coat of the base colour and then I concentrate on the inside of panels and areas that catch the light. This lightens these areas and creates a contrast with the rest. You stop at a point before you achieve the effect you want, this is important as it’s easy to overdo it. The you spray an overall mist coat of the base colour, do it slowly allowing a little time between coats for it to dry, stopping when you get to the effect/contrast that you want. Sometime you will need to work some localised areas where it is darker than you want. I always finish by adding Mr Levelling Thinner (MTL) to the empty cup and doing an overall mist coat which reactivates the paint and improves the finish. Do not flood the MLT whatever you do. Sometimes, like this build, I want a more subtle effect, sometimes I want a dirtier finish or, particularly in the case of a desert based aircraft, I want a much more sun bleached effect. This method is controllable enough to get whatever you want. On darker colours, such as the Dark Green of this build, the black basing does not do the job, in this case because it was applied over the Dark Earth. So in this situation you need to post-shade with a lighter shade of the base colour or, perhaps, add a spot of white to the base colour. Apply this to the inside of the panels and areas that catch the light. When I do this i will set out to exaggerate the contest I want to then tone it down with mist coats of the base colour.
This method works well with water based paint, such as Vallejo MA as well as the lacquers I use. I won’t know whether MLT will work with them though. If using water based paints you may need to do thin to varying degrees, for post-shading and mist coats even if using Model Air, non of which is necessary with MRP lacquers, except for the final MLT application that is, which is part of the airbrush cleaning regime anyway.
One important point, it must not look too even and regular. I have seen models done using post and pre-shading as well as black basing that demonstrate superb airbrush skills but the models look wrong simply because they look too neat as a result of those skills...
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