Painting markings

[Oceaneer99]

Here is an excellent discussion from Ken that I paste from his discussion of his B-25 model:

Thanks, guys.  Yes, at 1/72 this gets very tough.

You're absolutely right, Mark, about the alignment of the stars.  I had to check this thing again.  There might be an optical illusion in the pic because they are aligned as you said.  Two of them actually have the top of the star a little above the line of the bar and I will go back over that by hand and try to fix them.  The alignment was way off before I touched them up.  This gets back to the annoyance of trying to cut masks at this scale.  The masking material moves under the knife as I try to cut it, and I am using VERY sharp knives.  I usually notice I am cut when blood shows up on my work.

I had to do a lot of touch-up painting with the national insignia to make up for the flaws in the mask.  Because of that, I am thinking of no longer using them, though that sounds crazy to me.  It seems they will be much easier to paint without a mask.  The next time I do this, I plan to just use straight pieces of tape and brush them by hand instead of airbrushing them.  Using two pieces of tape, they can be masked out well enough to get the job done.  In future, I will probably spray a blue section, hand paint the stars and bars, then mask the outline of the insignia and paint the base color.

This paint scheme has a lot of thin striping, mostly in white.  I thought this would be very difficult to do but it actually was quite easy.  The trick was to only mask one side and let the brush thickness do the rest.  For the nose, just outline the aft edge and run your brush along the mask.  After you remove the tape, you can touch up the line thickness and paint coverage.  For the circle on the tail, same thing.  Cut a circle for the outline and run your brush along.  You only have to make sure you have enough thickness, not that it is the correct thickness.  After you lay down this color, touch up with the base color to get your line thickness right and to correct wherever you bleed under the mask.  I have always been intimidated by striping but now consider it as manageable.

For painting unit insignia, visualize it in layers.  All your painting will be in layers and can be corrected as long as you have the paints available that you have already used.  For the Indian head, I first layed down the white.  Again, there was that very thin outline of white.  No problem, just lay down a layer of white in the outline of the head and block it in.  Go over it enough times to get the color coverage right.  The next color was the brown.  That put in more of the face.  You then go in with a layer of black, forming the brown and white edges.  Detail comes next, facial details and the brown lines in the headdress.  Take your base color to edge the outside of the white again to get your stripe thickness right and you are done.  It's actually easy once you try it.  Shaking is sometimes manageable, unless you have a condition that you shake uncontrollably.  You need to brace the model, your support hand, and your painting hand, just don't support them on your belly where breathing and heartbeats make everything move.

I didn't do it enough for this one but something that is very important is to practice the marking by sketching.  Keep sketching it over and over again at actual size on paper until you get it right and have a plan in your head.  It will go much easier when you do this first.

Another thing that is crucial is the brush.  It is not important for the brush to be small but it is absolutely critical to have a good tip.  If the brush is too small, you won't have enough paint on the brush to do the job.  The tip has to come to a point.  That point has to be even (on the flat brushes) and can't be a thick, abrupt, ending of the hairs.  This gets to brush selection.

When chosing a brush for this kind of work, I prefer sable.  Nothing else works for me.  It needs to be an artist's brush, not a Testor's modeling brush.  Get yourself a small bottle that can be sealed and put some water in it.  Go to the store and choose the size sable brush you need for your collection.  Dip each candidate brush in the water and draw to a point on scrap paper, which is usually available in the store near this section.  Look at the tip.  If it is properly formed, buy the brush.  If the tip won't behave, don't buy it.  Don't dip the brush in your mouth because you don't know where the brush has been or what chemicals it has been exposed to.

I am not using a good white with this project but I have ideas on how to fix that.  Flow improvers are great for this work.  White is a very difficult color to work with.  The one I am using clots with the flow improver or thinner.  I am thinking of using quality artist acrylic, Winsor & Newton, in the future.  Their paints are expensive but they are very good.

Paint today is rarely made up of pigments.  It is usually a white base with dyes.  Old school and high quality paint use pigments.  Some of them get very expensive.  Also expensive are finely ground pigments.

We can't always use the best materials but we can definitely find ways of doing the best we can with what we find.

Ken Pugh

[lastvautour]

I have used masking to good effect but have yet to brush paint marking on directly to the model. I find that brushes leave a thick edge that I have not been able to overcome. What is your secret Ken.

Lou

[Balsabasher]

Ken some good insights there into your markings and how they are achieved,what a great sense of satisfaction to do it in this way.
Your tips about sketching the insignia before the actual painting is exactly what I did on my Red Bull P-38,the idea was inspired by picking up a Red Bull drinks can rolling around in the yard,I cut the design off the tin with a pair of scissors and practised drawing it onto paper,then I took a chinagraph pencil ( sometimes called a grease pencil ) and with a pre sharpened tip drew the design directly onto the nose of the model,the next step was to take a very fine blade and go around the outline just cutting slightly into the silver paint finish,a coat of Citadel flat white that crept up nicely to the slightly cut edge was allowed to cure,then I applied the gloss red directly onto the flat base.
I think the secret is to thin the paint just enough to flow without build up of the edges,enamel paint seems to suffer more from this symptom,two thin coats are better than one thicker one,just gradually build up as Ken decribes.
Painting markings is a time consuming task,it can take me a week of sessions just to paint on the national markings alone,with practise you just get better and better like everthing we do.
Thanks Ken for the insight,there is room for learning something new every day from the solid model craftsmen here.

Barry.

[Ken Pugh]

Sorry it took me so long to answer your question, Lou.  That was because I was wondering how I got rid of the same problem I have had all my life.

First off, as Barry said, flow most occur.  I do not, however, thin down so far that it is practically a wash.  I must admit, I am using cheap craft paint straight from the bottle on these markings with good results.  Also, if you are having these kinds of problems, light sanding between coats works great, as I found on my Oscar.

Remember that mess ups can usually be wiped clean when using acrylics.

Layering is also important.  You are building up coverage and will have to go over things several times with some colors.  Also, give it a good chance to dry before the next layer.

Don't sand extremely smooth with fine grade sandpaper.  This mistake will greatly affect paint adhesion.  On the F-102, I had a very smooth, almost hard, finish on the wood.  When I painted the tail using masking tape, the paint was only just laying on top of the previous coat.  Upon removing the tape, a lot of the paint tried to come off, not in flakes but the entire marking.

I think the best thing to eliminate this problem is red sable brushes.  Real red sable and with no synthetic fibers.  The ones I am using now are Loew-Cornell Arttec Red Sable brushes.  Over time I collected a few rounds and brights (flats).  I did not get large brushes.  As they started getting more expensive, I took advantage of sales and coupons to complete my small collection.  I keep them separate from the other brushes in a box, which is not the proper way to store them.  They should be stored upright with the hairs up and separate.  It is important to protect the tip because that is all there is to the brush.  Once that is gone you might as well throw it away.

Technique helps, too.  When starting, I dip the brush in thinner, water in my case, and pull it along a napkin to get the hairs in their natural point.  I dip the brush in so that plenty of paint is on the brush.  If at any time in the process the paint is not flowing well, clean the brush, dip in thinner, and draw on the napkin, resetting the point.

When painting with a round with a good point, there are several ways to get your line.  You can paint by flexing the brush and getting the full thickness of the brush, or you can use the brush more upright.  With light pressure the tip does not flex and the line gets extremely thin.  I found that I could go along outside my work and do pinstriping in 1/72 scale with the same 00 brush.  With a proper, red sable tip, you can get remarkably thin lines.  As long as you can match previous colors, you can edge in on your line and make it even thinner or correct it where it fattens.

For general acrylic painting I have great success with Robert Simmons Sapphire brushes.  I think there may be some synthetic in those but they work well.  For the critical work, though, I go back to 100% red sable.

Hobby brushes tend to be real thick, like a mop.  Paint does not flow off them.  I get the same effect using camel hair brushes with oil paints on canvas.  There is the thinning of the center of the stroke and a ridge of paint to either side.  Camel hair does not flex well and does not flow paint, but oil paints that are thick are meant to be moved, not flowed.  They are frequently placed on the canvas next to each other then blended with another brush.

When looking at artist brushes, keep moving along until it specifically says red sable.  No blends with synthetic.  If it doesn't say red sable, it definitely is not, no matter how much they brag about their quality.  They may be good for most purposes, but not for painting detailed markings or very small, precise detail.

There is a case where synthetic brushes are an absolute must have.  Minwax Polycrylic water based finish, which I like and use a lot, specifically recommends a synthetic brush.  The reason is that it removes any tip benefit you get with a natural hair brush.  It doesn't always ruin it permanently, but the tip will not function with that stuff on the brush.  A very nice, synthetic, artist brush works very well with that.  I use an Arttec Royale with Polycrylic.

I also cannot stress enough a light touch.  The brush should flex, but don't flex it much past the middle of the hairs.  If you flex it back towards the ferrule, the brush is not functioning properly.  The less flex, the thinner the line.  Use the handle close to upright.  Practice on paper and you can see all the different line thichnesses you can get with the brush tip.

It is instructive to watch videos of people painting signs.  They have the work upright and use the brush almost perpendicular to the work.  The paint they use is One Shot, the stuff Martin loves.  That stuff is great paint but expensive.  It is a joy to work with.  They typically flex the brush so that they are getting full line thickness for that size brush.  As they go through their letters, they twirl the brush.  They can paint lettering free hand and very fast.  With acrylics, we can't get that kind of flow, but we can learn to work with them and get good results.

Of course, if I ever get my hands on a ruling bow pen, I may be using it a lot for my lining, but the unit markings are best done by brush.

Ken Pugh

[lastvautour]

Thanks Ken.

Lou