So I've finally got off my lazy rear and started airbrushing some of my Gundams. Actually, no, I take it back, I've started doing it regularly. I've had my SD GP02A seamline-less and puttied for about a year now. Anyway, the last week or two I've got in more airbrush time on my stuff than I have in the 2 years (wow, has it been that long?) that I've owned my airbrush (Badger 175). I have some german grey sprayed on the dark gray parts for the GP02A, semi-gloss black base coat sprayed on the majority of the rest of the parts that I'm still not trying to get puttied to my satisfaction, and then for the RX-78 I have had the parts sanded and puttied for a few months now. I primed them about 2-3 days ago, and today got out while there was still some sunlight in the sky (I have to airbrush on the balcony of mine and my girlfriend's tiny 1 bedroom apartment) and got almost all of the base colors on (blue, red, yellow and some more german gray - damn I love that color!). I ran into three problems. First, my yellow came out slightly greenish tinted (I think that's because I didn't run enough thinner through the AB between colors, since I did blue right before the yellow). Second, while in the middle of spraying the red I realized one of the feet was missing (I found it a little while later, while on the way to the trash can with my used paper towels and q-tips from cleaning the AB. I first spotted the skewer it was on, and then it sank in that the skewers were something one of my cats might like to get into.... the foot was spotted about a foot away, hiding underneath a small TV in the dining room/GF's "corner"). Last and most troubling (until I think I figured out what the prob was) the white I was using (Tamiya XF-1 White) was only coming out as clear. It was well-mixed, and I had added the correct amount of thinner (1:1 or so). I went through 2 cup fulls of it (the AB cup) before I gave up; I had got SOME of it to stick to one of the legs, but only after spraying a TON of it, until it was running off... which wasn't good. I only realized after I had got everything cleaned up and put away that my moisture trap was just about full..... D'OH!!! And then I remembered my girlfriend telling me it was supposed to start raining tomorrow and for several days between now and next week.... so yeah, the humidity was high today :)
So I guess my project tomorrow will be to strip the two parts I tried to paint white and get the white done, strip the yellow and get that put back on, and maybe try to snap some pics of the RX-78. For now, I think I'm going to go touch up the base coat of the GP02A, sand some of the puttied parts and add them to my queue of stuff to spray tomorrow (need to re-primer it). I'll try to take some WIP pics; I know my stuff isn't as good as ya'lls, but I'm definitely open to critique and improvement in my techniques.
So, will Tamiya white directly over Tamiya Grey primer be oK? Or will it maybe be a bit easier to do a black basecoat then do the white over it? And what psi/thinner to paint ratio should I be using for the white?
I'm going to be working on some cars (mostly Mustangs, maybe one of the new Challenger kits) in the future, as well as a bike or two (I got my GF a 1/12 Tamiya Ninja for $10 when one of the LHS had a bunch of them on clearance. Of course, I'll have to sprinkle those in with the gazillion Gundams that are queued up :) This whole not having a job thing is pretty good for my Plamo hobby, yeah?