>I am still curious about the actual painting process...
James,
Thanks for bringing these questions up. You are very right. I have
unintentionally omitted much of the actual technical details regarding the
process. It is easy to over some issues when discussing a topic like this.
The irony of it is that I have only airbrushed mylars a total of three times
(not counting a few practice strokes on paper). You don't need to be worried
about not becoming proficient in a short amount of time!
Masking is another good point you make. I've only done it once on a v-tail
feather. I masked the tips, painted the inner panels, let the white paint
dry, masked over the whites using some post it notes pressed gently against
the painted mylars. I found I that pulled up a very small amount of the
white paint, but it did not ruin the paint job. The only thing that I wonder
about with masking is that when the airbrush is spraying, it can be very
forceful depending on the amount of air you select. This airforce might blow
the masking away.
I am sure that there is a simple solution to this, but painted mylars are a
unique application of airbrushing. You have to work from the back out.
Another words, the first layer of paint to hit the mylar is going to be the
outter most layer of paint when the wing is bagged and the mylars are
removed. You need to keep this in mind. Most artists will airbrush the
background colors onto things (t-shirts) and paint over that to make their
images. With mylars, this would be hard to do. You could try the reverse,
but like I showed on the web tutorial, blending colors by overlapping did
not have the intended effect that I wanted.
Of course, because I am a newbie as well, there are probably already
solutions to many of these issues.
One more point I'll make. You were wondering about the opaquiness with the
paints and if it was readily noticable. On my very thin v-tail feathers, the
bottoms are mylar'ed red, the tops have black, red and yellow. The black is
opaque and does not allow the light to bleed through. The red just looks a
little more red, but the yellow does look somewhat orange, buy only when
held up to the sun directly and looking at it only a few inches away. The
effect starts to disappear the further away you get. Also, I used pink foam,
which might have had and effect with the color play.
I will say this also. I don't personally have any molded ships, but I've
seen a lot of them. Most of them have great paint jobs. The FC wing bottom
was painted with Gloss Cherry Red from testors and it truly does look like a
molded paint job. I not exaggerating at all. By making sure that the paint
coverage was consistent, I did not get any light areas of paint coverage.
The top of the wing is nice, but the bottom is where all of my pride is.
Let me get back to the drawing board and work in some more details giving
the specifics. I'll announce when completed.
Joedy
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