The weather here in Canberra has been magic for the last couple of days. Sunny, low 20's and no wind. So when I got home from work a bit earlier than usual today, I decided it would be the ideal opportunity to get the airbrush out and get some paint on some of the half finished kits on my workbench. I'd had a go earlier in the week at painting inside, and it wasn't real pleasant to be honest. To do the job properly, you really do need good ventilation and natural light (just like everyone says!). So I knocked up a quick workbench that hangs of the railing on the back porch. Only took about 45 minutes and it does the job nicely.
I set up the airbrush with some Steam Era Models Wagon Red and got out some of the container wagons I had ready to go. First up was the 3x IDR Castings VQDW wagons from the previous post. I'd given them a coat of primer on the weekend, as per the instructions. It took me a while to get the hang of the airbrush; it's only the third time I've really used it. Initially, I was applying too much paint, and I wasn't getting an even finish. But eventually I worked out that a couple of light coats gave a much better finish than one heavy coat. Also, thanks to the natural light, it was much easy to see where extra paint was required, especially in all the crevices.
Next up was 4x Steam Era Models VQCX Kits. By this time I had the hang of the airbrush, and I ended up with a pretty good finish. One thing I did notice was that the styrene VQCX kits seemed to be easier to paint than the resin/primer VQDW kits. The paint just seemed to go on a bit smoother with the styrene, not sure why that is. Probably need to do a bit of reading up on that...
Overall though, pretty happy with the result.
During the week I got around to doing some work on a LBAT VVDY Guard's Van. There were quite a few bubbles on the surface of the resin casting, but with a bit of filler and some sanding the casting comes up alright.
There's still some prep work left to do on this one...
