I am getting closer and closer to becoming a serious student of the Jedi art of Airbrushing.
While I have yet to perfect my technique, I am leaning towards the Dark Side in prefering higher pressures as compared to lower ones.
I have been practicing non-stop on my poor half-built F-18 that serves as my trusty piece of scrap plastic.
Kudos to whomever came up with the oven-cleaner method of stripping paint, as this war-weary F-18 has been airbrushed and stripped almost five times over now.
Currently it bears a hodge podge camoflage pattern of brown, green and black complete with splotches, spiders, and even my signature as I strive to perfect my art.
Im currently using a 60-40 paint to thinner mix but im still not getting the fine edge I crave yet.
Im not confident enough to try a complete model yet, but I have a bare plastic F-105 waiting in the wings for when I truly feel able to do a tri-color camo pattern.
I won’t wish you luck because you don’t need it. You have already found the two keys to airbrushing: 1) Practice, practice, and yet more practice; and 2) Determining what works best for YOU. Learning to use an airbrush doesn’t come in the box, from a book or forum, or in a paint mixture. It comes with practice and you are providing that. Likewise, what works best for one person doesn’t always work best for another person, they are only starting points. It is important to find what works best on an individual basis, and you are doing that. Like I said, you don’t need luck you’ve already found what you need. I will offer my congratulations though!
Second on that. Been airbrushing since the early 70’s, and no two sessions are the same. Practice is the key to getiing the basics down and see what works for you. I suggest keeping a record of everything you do for a reference later on. You will find this invaluable in the future. Easy off, great stuff. I hear it even cleans ovens.
oven cleaner strips paint? just use a rag and wipe it off? I could use a fresh start on my ferrari, its getting a little thick in the detailed cracks and I cant sand that down…
You take your model and put it into a bag ( Ziploc or that kind); you spray your oven cleaner on the model and close the bag; you can put the model into the fridge for several hours as cold could enhance the action of oven cleaner ( this point can remain controversial ) ; you rinse your model under tap water while scrubbing it with a tootbrush; et voilà ! I was doing this the other day and acrylic Tamiya went off but not the Tamiya white primer, maybe the exposure time; by the way, I did not want the primer to go, so…
There are other means : brake fluid ( yecccHHHH ! ) and Castrol Super Clean but here in France nobody seems to know it so back to oven cleaner as it works.
I appreciate all the encouragement. This afternoon I decided to take the plunge and try my first camo job on my F-105.
I am maybe 60% pleased with the results (until I look at some of the masterpieces around here)
However I decided to use this as a lesson and post the results looking for some critiques.
Any help/comments are welcome.
#1 is the overall model
#2 shows the border between belly and the camo. I am still getting fuzzy overspray
#3 shows the wing camo…again overspray and the results of a bad sanding job are evident.
#4 was just for fun…it shows my poor practice plane. An F-18 that bears the brunt of my mistakes. LOL Seriously I reccomend this for any fellow newbies to practice with.
If it were me, using your picture 2 as a reference, I’d load up some gray paint and reshoot the demarcation between the gray and green. Lean the airbrush at about 45 degrees so that the back of the airbrush leans into the green area (if the model is laying flat on its belly you would be spraying down at about a 45 degree angle).I’d spray at about 8 psi, about 1/4" to 1/2" from the surface and just barely let the paint flow. But I personally prefer low pressure.
