I think what happened with my hands is that the glue from the models melted. While I was brushing the paint off, the glue seeped onto my fingers in a really fine layer. Two days later (I spread out my posts, this one is actually real-time) my fingers are still coated with glue and the skin underneath is still growing and should be discarding dead skin but isn’t, because of the layer of glue. Gross. Tried to take an emery board or something to them, but ended up just scraping at my fingertips with a fingernail while watching TV. This morning they are much better. 🙂
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Technique
I haven’t stripped models in years. I think I remember why. These are the last generation metal horrors and flamers. I usually don’t like “older” models, but in this case I feel like these models are still just as awesome looking as the current plastic ones.
Empty bottle of Pine Sol, the only water-tight container I could find that I didn’t care about, a new toothbrush bought just for stripping and my hobby knife.
It’s a painful process.
- Submerge the models in Pine Sol (or your stripper of choice) for “some significant time”. I tend to do more than 24 hours.
- Pull them out of the Pine Sol, put on a movie you only need the sound for, get an old toothbrush (“Firm”) and scrub those suckers.
- Rinse and repeat (literally) until all the paint is gone.
I’ve heard people using brake fluid as well, but I’ve never used that before.
I put on Avengers, and the next day, Avengers with Joss Wedon’s commentary (still an awesome movie, even after I’ve watched it 6-7 times). I’ve scrubbed so hard that my fingers look like utter crap several days later.
Most of the paint is now gone from the models, but there is still some paint, in some recesses. Ugh. I’m hoping that I can catch the rest of it while I re-assemble the models, because any paint left over after priming will have that section of primer falling off.
My airbrush and I are fighting. We’re still speaking, but it’s going to come to a shouting argument pretty soon…
So happy I used test models…I kept spraying, and the camera hides some of the badness of it all.
Wanted to try a two colour blend and thought I’d give the airbrush a try, since it (in theory…) can feather the edges and all that. At the very least, I could quickly put down 2 colours on the model.
I started with the P3 Exile Blue, since it’s closest to what I wanted. Blue, but with a hint of purple in it. I mixed some water in and started spraying (center high elf) and ended up with a horrible splotchy mess. I waited for that to dry, sprayed again and it’s still coming out in little droplets.
Figured I added to much water. Cleaned the paint holder out, and put just straight Exile Blue in. That also came out horrible and splotchy. (right archer)
Grabbed a GW paint, Altdorf Guard Blue. Not the colour I wanted, but I could improvise. No water. Nothing came out of the airbrush! Go to the sink, clean out the dried paint (…), back to my painting and mix some water in. Now I’m getting a decent flow, but I definitely have to watch out – to much paint on the area and it starts to collect in the recesses and slide away from the tips. (left archer).
So now I’m still trying to figure out my variables…
- How much pressure? I tried different settings with each consistency, and it didn’t seem to matter much.
- How much water? It felt like the P3 paints had to much already! GW needed a bit to get going.
- How far away from the model? To close, and the pressure (#1!) pushed the watery paint away!
The worst part about all of this…is that I had a complete success with the airbrush on my Ork plane (which I still need to take finished photos of, apparently…). Paint went on smooth, I highlighted with the airbrush and all that good stuff. I’ve had nothing but failure since then and it’s really frustrating. 🙁
I picked up some of the Dreadball decals since they look way better than my free-hand numbers painting. Would you believe that I’ve never applied a waterslide decal in my life? I’ve bought next to a billion orks, with 10 billion decals, and I’ve never once used one.
I’ve been reading the Forge World Masterclass Vol 2 book, and it reminded me that decals can look good and not “fake”.
I’ve been using this guide from the blog “From the Warp”, which didn’t steer me wrong. I think I would add three things – use both tweezers and hobby knife when picking up the transfer, don’t put to much water on the model, and have a paper towel handy.
You need one implement to move the decal from the water to the model, and a second implement to get it off the first implement! I picked up with the tweezers and removed with the knife. The water thing is because otherwise you’ll have no control over where the decal slides to once it’s on the model. The paper towel is because no matter how much you think you’ve master point 2, you’ll eventually add to much water and need to soak some of it away so your thrice-damned decal will stop sliding around.
Thinking I’ll head to Staples tomorrow and pick up some more lamps, so I can photographize this week. This team is a decal-weathering away from being done! I love a project that starts and finishes in 4 days. 🙂
A couple changes to my process tonight.
Like most hobby desks, mine is in serious need of cleaning.
I’ve only ever used a wet palette at painting classes. It seemed like something people did when they were taking a class. The other day I was in Michaels and picked up some parchment paper (baking section) and made it happen.You need:
- A plastic lid, or styrofoam plate.
- A piece of paper towel and get it moist (but not soaked).
- Parchment paper and place it on top of the moist towel.
I’ve had that dark grey, and the lighter grey next to it, wet all night long. I’ve been painting for 2 hours, judging by the episode of Chumphammer I’m listening to. The big bonus of this is that I can go back and forth with my colours. If the dark got too dark, do a layer of the light, and vice versa. And this is how you do glazing! I’ve been doing it with a dry palette for a few years, and mixing new paints/water when I needed them, but this…this is way better. Highly recommended.
The other new thing on my desk is a dedicated clean water bottle. For years I’ve been using water out of my cleaning pot to water down my paints. The other day, I noticed that my grey was red. >.< You’d think I would notice that sooner (there’s a good story from my GW days, working with Owen, here), but my eyes have a very hard time discerning the difference between similar shades. (And don’t even get me started on navy blue/purple). Clean water bottle, also a total win.
I like having a back-log of posts lined up, and I don’t want to post spam, so we’ll get into the actual end result of the glazing…tomorrow.
Glazing was a good class. I didn’t learn a whole lot, for reasons we’ll get into, but I left feeling energized, which was a feat considering the absolute exhaustion I went into the class with!
I can’t remember or Google the teacher’s name, but he was originally a student of Mathieu Fontaine, whom I’ve written about before. “Glazing”, it turns out, is a technique I’ve learned already. Start with a mid-tone and apply successive layers of darker mixes to the shaded portion of an area, layers of lighter mixes to the highlighted area. Nothing new there.
What was new, was that I’d played with a bunch of this stuff and looked into different ways of applying the methods Mathieu taught. So I asked a bunch of questions. I asked about how James Wappel does his stuff, I asked about using the artists matte medium as a pigment thinner and generally just had the confidence to have a conversation about this stuff.
The downside…they have no idea how Wappel does what he does, and they recommend against the matte medium.
One thing I really did re-learn, is that I really should figure out how to include a wet palette into my painting workflow. I learned it with Fontaine, but neglected it, and it’s really kind of useful to do. >.<
I think it was mostly invigorating because I felt like I was a part of the conversation. Like I could paint something, and potentially be able to speak knowledgeably about how and why I did what I did. Like I could put something together that would look decent in that competition shelving out front.
I’m still going to use the medium, because I’ve loved what I’ve done with it so far. 😛
Edit: I believe that the teacher was Alex Akers. He runs Battleroad Games and his (defunct) hobby blog is at http://akersminis.blogspot.ca/.
It’s been a while since I took this class and wrote these notes. So this should be pretty short, as I flail and desperately trying to figure out what my notes meant. Click the continue to see some cool pictures and laugh at my recall!
Airbrushes have an odd mystique about them. Some people say “that’s not fair, he cheated and used an airbrush!” Some people try to use them as the sole method of painting. But an airbrush is just a tool, and it can only really speed up something that you were trying to do anyway. He painted a solid base/shade/highlight in about 10 minutes, which took us 3-4 hours to get done right. They have a steep learning curve. Be prepared to swear for at least 2 months.
Just about every airbrush brand has a good model, so don’t worry so much about that. Except for Testors/Aztek, which apparently have some technical flaws to them. You want a dual-action airbrush, so you can control airflow through the brush. You want a top/gravity-fed airbrush so you can use less paint. Side-feed are ok too, but with siphon/bottom-fed you have to mix a lot of paint in order to get the little hose to be able to suck on the paint. You want a brush that can have a nozzle somewhere between 0.15 and 0.6 size. 0.4 or lower is preferred for our uses.
Compressors should put out 15-30psi and have a regulator so you can control the amount of air coming from it. You can use a cheaper power tool compressor, but you’ll have to buy an adapter and a regulator and probably an extra water trap since they put out a lot of heat. One with a tank is nice since it only has to run when the tank depressurizes. Otherwise the compressor is only good for about 45 minutes before it overheats. His cost $1500!
A few accessories of note:
- A quick connect adapter means you can detach the airbrush pretty easily for cleaning or changing paints.
- An airbrush holder lets you put the brush down for a moment.
- A cleaning kit.
He took apart his airbrush for cleaning. Remove the back, pull the needle out without bending it. Remove the front and the nozzle. Use rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip to clean everything and inside the metal casing of the brush. The nozzle can get clogged, so there is a tiny little accessory to poke out the clog. When done painting, put thinner in the bowl and spray it until clean. Brush out the bowl and do it again. Then it’s ready for the next colour.
You can buy airbrush specific paint, but GW/P3 paints work out ok if you thin properly. It can clog the nozzle, so watch out. He creates a thinner that is 85% water and 15% isopropyl alcohol. Mix that 1 part paint to 5 parts thinner.
Then use the same techniques as painting with a brush – use a succession of thin layers. He painted on a base colour, then shaded to black, then highlighted to white. Mask off areas you don’t want covered with paint, let it dry before the next coat and spray away from the tape in case it isn’t stuck down completely.
Just before we finished he passed the model around and someone commented that his base colour was almost gone. He agreed and then thinned out some of the base colour and sprayed it all cover the work he’d just finished, creating a pre-blended piece of work that looked great!
This weekend of Masterclass Painting is about vehicles. We’re painting a Dark Eldar Helion glider thing (no rider). This morning started at 9am, and we immediately got into base coating, shading and highlighting this model. We had lunch in the middle and at about 1pm we got into the meat of the new material – various weathering techniques. After dinner we talked about airbrushing for a few hours and then ended the evening, exhausted, at 9pm.
Tomorrow we start again at 9am and I think we’re going to get into basing. But for now, hit the jump and we’ll take a look at some of what we did today!
Day 2 started out pretty well – I caught the right bus, I knew where I was going, I found a McDicks to get a McGriddle at (praise the evil genius who invented the McGriddle!), I ate breakfast with a fellow painter who was pretty awesome and then we walked to the shop to get our paint on!
We waited for a bit. 9am rolls around, which is when the event starts and we think “Oh well, the keyholder just slept in a bit, no big deal.” Everyone is pretty cool. Another 15…then another…then it’s 50 minutes later and we’re trying to figure out how to get ahold of the guy so we can get into the shop!
The fellow is found and is properly apologetic and we get excited to finally get our thing going. And then…we find…that the door lock has been glued shut. As in, the key hole has been filled with glue. The kind of glue that fills a hole really good, and then sticks really good. Curses, frustration…and resignation. It’s going to be a while to get a locksmith over to fix it…so a bunch of us head to the toy shop across the way (convenient, really).
If you ever get a chance to go into Toy Traders in Langley (God help you if you need to be in Langley…) I highly recommend it. Fantastic toy shop! Board games, barbie dolls, massive sections of comics and collectible action figures and LEGO and Brio and building blocks and if you look up, the owners of the store clearly have a hard-on for Star Wars. Awesome shop.
At about 11am we get into the store and get going. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time to cover it in. We order pizza in, and we ended up skipping the last section of the class. Sadness. 🙁