So, I decided to have another go with Vallejo
Model Air for this one. Others seem to have great success with it, but for whatever reason I just can't. I tried many different thinning ratios, flow aid and no flow aid, low pressure, high pressure, stripped and cleaned the AB many times, and still it would only just spit and fart the colour out. I eventually managed to get it looking something like reasonable, but I'm not really happy with it. In many places I've had to chase the colour to cover spidering or big dry blobs when I was getting no paint at all coming out, then suddenly it would all come at once!
I think it's convinced me to stick to Mr Color for
airbrush work, or try the MRP paints that Barry W gets such an amazing result from.
Anyway, rant over, on with the show
Everything got an all over coat of the Dark Slate Grey I'd used on the chassis just to make sure I didn't miss any spots, then I started assembly
I then started to try and add a bit of variation by lightening the colour with Light Slate Grey and some yellow, and some darker bits by adding Dark Earth. I think I was probably a bit too subtle about it as it's hardly noticeable in the pictures, even with flash.
Then I started on the camo, which is when the AB problems got really bad. If I'd wanted to do a marble style camouflage it would have been perfect with the paint pulsing on and off whenever it felt like it, but trying to get a reasonably even covering was a nightmare, and the spluttering caused overspray to go far and wide, ruining the neat lines I was aiming for.
But then I said I was going to stop ranting
I've been reading up on the scale effect and it made a lot of sense, so rather than using black for the camo I used a very dark grey, and added more black as I got to the bottom of the model. The brown was a mixture of an RLM Dark Brown, Rust, and a drop of red.
Doesn't look as bad in the photo's as real life to be honest, but I'm hoping a bit of weathering will hide the issues even further. I don't think I'll ever get really fine lines and sharp edges from this
airbrush (or paint!) but that's an upgrade for another day. It's currently sat in the house to harden up a bit before I go any further.
By the way, I dug out my old Lumix TZ4 for these pictures. Hopefully they are a bit better than my usual phone ones, although I don't think the auto resizing on imgur helps.