Masking practice

In preparation for the bigger Eldar vehicles and the Wraithknight I needed to practice airbrush gems as well as using liquid masking agent and masking tape. Looking at likely models to use for this, I grabbed some jetbikes and a viper, which came with a lot of metal minis in an eBay lot. I had removed a lot of paint from the plastic models and set them aside a while ago.

I worked them over a little bit, whereever I noticed paint or mold lines left and then basecoated them using Vallejo Airbrush Primer in Grey. Then I followed BuyPainted's Eldar gem airbrush tutorial, creating a diagonal colour gradient between VMA Tank Brown and Sand, with a dash of black at the top and a coat of Tamiya Clear Red diluted with Alcohol.

When the gems seemed dry, I applied the liquid mask. I found that much more difficult than explected. Since the material is very thick, like wood glue and just as opaque white, it doesn't flow around the gem contours. Instead it needs to be pushed very bit of the way. In addition, I was under the impression that a thick-ish coat is needed.

In any case, after the mask dried surprisingly quickly and turned clear, I hit the gems and the overspray with some more grey primer. Then, I diluted some Citadel Yriel Yellow and covered the miniatures with that, followed by Flash Glitz Yellow from above.

With the majority base colour applied and the masked gems hidden away, I then went to town with masking tape.

 After rechecking each model's masking tapes, I hit it with VMA Blue followed by some more VMA Blue with white mixed in. After waiting for a good while for the paint to dry and being too wussy to whip out the heat gun to help things along, I started peeling. There was a little leakage, but nothing major.

The gems were a bigger problem. At first I tried to peel the liquid mask off using my fingernails, then I tried gentle nudging at the edge with a toothpick. I ended up with a messy border though, I guess it was too much mask in some places, or too much primer on top of it, forming an elastic sheet that I was then pulling on. Then I found my results improved a lot after scoring the edge of the gem very gently with the hobby knife and then just sliding my finger over the mask, ripping it off easily. Clearly, I need to work on my technique for the liquid mask, but first steps are done. The bigger the gem is, the less problems it should present for this process.

All in all, the result is ok or even nice - unless you look too close and get to see past the touch-up I did around the stripes and the gems. ;-]

These bikes need some dark colour for the weapons and turbines, some dash of something on the instruments and of course the crew of the viper needs some love. The Jetbike riders are still in a box, being too messed up for me to fix them before the experiment. I'll deal with them later. Hopefully a new tool will arrive soon and make getting pesky colour off their tiny details a breeze.