I’m just starting to paint some planes, and was just wandering you can paint an aircraft by hand, or do you have to use a airbrush to make it look good
When you say “Painting by hand” I assume that you mean with a brush and not with a spray can. You can get good results brush painting, depending on how good you are! I have never gotten decent results, but that’s just me. In the information column at the very left of the screen there is a “Browse By Subject” area. Click “Tehniques” and then scan the results. There is an article about brush painting that will provide a lot of help.
You can get pretty good results from brush painting, althought some effects would be hard to achieve such as Luftwaffe mottles and soft edge camoflague demarcations. Some techniques you can try is to use a pretty broad brush with really wet paint and only brush stroke it in one directions. Once the paint starts to level stop brushing or else you will end up with some heavy brush marks. After the paint has fully dried and cured, you can wet sand with very fine sandpaper to get out even more of the brush marks. Works very well, for US Army Air Force schemes and similar schemes.