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Custom Painting Loco's and Cars...
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Practice whatever technique(s) you may choose on an older car or shell, even on the discarded remains of items you've used for kitbashing. If you're like me, you have a bunch of "budget" rolling stock that just doesn't measure up; I have used these to refine my fictional paint scheme as well as teach myself how to paint it. <br /> <br />Now, everyone says get a good quality airbrush, and I can't really disagree with that, but for me, I grew tired of the constant cleaning I had to do to keep my airbush working. I also hated mixing up the paint to the right consistency (generally speaking it must be thinned a certain degree), since I like to work with acrylics (due to lack of ventilation). These days, I am experimenting with a "water-color" method of painting locomotives, with a high degree of success. <br /> <br />Essentially, it boils down to this: I mix acrylic colors to inky thinness, diluting with water, then apply it with a supple brush. It takes several coats to get full coverage, but I consider this an opportunity. How, you ask? Well, I start it all off with a base coat of a compatible primer spray paint coat, usually black but I also stock gray and rust red versions of primer. As you paint the multiple layers of extremely thin pain, it covers unevenly and lets a bit of the base color through, which gives it a built-in weathering effect. Because the paint is so thin, I never get any brush strokes. I mix up my colors on-the-fly for each project, so that each engine and car can have some slight tonal variations, such as making my black be actually a dark grey to represent a high degree of UV fading. <br /> <br />Purists must be cringing right now, but I'm more convinced by my water-colored paint jobs than I ever was by my airbrushed ones; they always seemed so flat and devoid of character. The water-color results are rich in character, and I have to believe this is partially because the method requires you to get in there and touch a paint bru***o every nook and cranny; you sense all the details, and consequently you appreciate your model just a little more. <br /> <br />This method, however, does not work for a masked paint scheme, so I am only doing base colors plus decals.
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