|
General RC Painting Tips
From Rattle Can Paint Jobs to Using an
Airbrush.
OK so the guy down the
street has a stunning paint job and you want to know the "How To
Paint 101". First off and contrary to popular opinion, you
don't have to have an airbrush to do a cool paint job. What you do
need to learn are masking skills, how to use stencils and paint masks,
shading, and how to know what colors go with what colors - all of these
are things I am personally working on improving. Start
with a Great Body
Some of the bodies out there are a little thin or lack detail.
Match up your masking skills with the complexity of bodies curves.
I have found the above Pro-Line RockStar body as an example to be one of
the toughest from a masking perspective. Pro-Line makes some of
the toughest bodies and if you are going to go to the trouble of
painting a nice body, might as well have it last a while. BoLink
bodies are the most scale bodies I have found of vintage vehicles.
Hard as hell to find and thinner than Pro-Line bodies, but great
diversions from the norm. Keep
it Simple
Although those twelve color RC CAR cover paint jobs are killer cool,
some of the paint jobs I like best are just two-three colors with some great
mashing work. Dark To
Light
When painting from the inside out such as our little Lexan bodies,
always start with the darkest colors first then progressively move to
your lighter colors. On my featured Rockstar body, I didn't really
follow that rule because I wanted the depth and color changes that the
bleeds would provide. Noting I ended up with some Blues and Greens
even though I didn't use those colors. Just Note: Darker colors
WILL bleed through lighter colors, so if you shoot a yellow body and
back it with black it will get darker and won't pop as a color as much
and chances are the black will "Fade/Bleed" though. If you
want everything to pop from a color perspective always move from darkest
colors to lightest. Paints
Just so we are clear on paints, there are two basic types of paints;
water-based and non-water-based. The rattle/spray can paints are
all non-water-based. Typical Lexan airbrush paints are FasKolor's
water-based paints. The non-water-based paints are more resistant
to solvents where as he water-based paints allow very easy clean up. Clean
Up
Clean up wet paint with most non-water-based paints can be done with the
paint's specified cleaner (usually mineral spirits). Water-based
paints are far easier hot water and windshield washer cleaner will have
your airbrush squeaky clean in under a minute. Screw
Ups
Let's say you get done with your masterpiece that you have spent long
hours of fitting the body, masking, painting, and your time cost does
not include the original cost of the body. All that work and your
work of art is hidious, seriously ugly, like you actually laugh at it
and wonder what in the hell you were thinging creating such a butt ugly
paint job - don't worry all is not lost. If you shot the paint job
with an airbrush and all water-based paints, head down to your garage
sink and scrub the body in the hottest water you can stand with plenty
of dish soap and with a stiff dish washing brush. Hit the detail
areas with an old toothbrush and presto, a couple soaps and rinses later
you have a perfectly clear body again. With non-water-based paints
its a little tougher but follows the same process but with a different
paint remover. I have had great success with 20-30% nitro, however
I want to point out that the stuff is obviously potentially explosive so
reasonable safety precautions should be taken. Using nitro in
several waves with a toothbrush will eventually remove all the paint,
however you will still need to remove the now fluid paint on the
body. A healthy spray down with WD-40 then followed up with
several sudsy baths with revel a like new clear body. I have also
heard of using brake cleaner or buggy blast as a cleaning agent instead
of Nitro, however I have always just used nitro with good results and
it's fairly environmentally friendly. Masking
Materials
Scrap the yellow masking tape and go buy some 3M blue painters tape all
I can say is there is a world of difference. With tape just make sure
your are really sticking down the edges or your will suffer the dreaded
paint bleed and have rough lines. Other masking materials include "airbrush stencil
sheets", they stick on like sheets of plastic and you
can then cut out a design and remove the unwanted mask area. The
ARE AWESOME and far, far
easier to deal with than the liquid masks, however they are expensive so
I use them for detail areas and tape for large simple coverage areas and
it's not too bad. This is what I use for all my detailed masks vs.
something like a Parma Liquid Mask. I
used the airbrush stencil material for this Neumotor logo'ed Brushless
GTX2 body. 
Parma liquid mask will also net you very clean
lines, I am not a liquid mask fan and find it a complete pain in the
ass. Some people love it.. I am not one of them. If you don't get 3-4 heavy coats on it simply sucks to
remove from the body and can leave you swearing and it isn't
particularly inexpensive - expect one small $7 bottle to do an entire
body. If you buy it
consider that one of the small bottles will do one medium body - just
buy the stuff in 16oz bottles. Admittedly it is pretty cool stuff, paint a couple
coats on, let it dry overnight and then track and cut out your designs
and remove the area to be painted. This is handy stuff when you
get into multi-color or very detailed stencil paint schemes. Fixing
Line Bleeds
Someone once told me to use a toothpick or bamboo cooking skewer as an
eraser to correct bleeds - works great and I use it all the time, because I
generally suck as doing perfect masking. I have a $1 bag of bamboo
cooking skewers that I use to "correct" any lines that have bleed
outside of their lines. Pattern
Paint Masks
There are almost limitless paint masks that allow you to just buy,
apply, paint, remove paint again and give you a good clean paint
job. Start learning how to shade and fad and these simple and
cheap stick on masks deliver very trick paint jobs. You can also
make your own with stick on airbrush masking stencil sheets - same deal. Below
I used the included paint mask for the Axial Baja body, masked out the
hood, sprayed through a piece of window screen with gold, removed all the masks
and shot the entire body black. Simple and freaky cool carbon
fiber look. 
Stencils
Like I used the window screen above to just spray through. Stencils don't stick on, you just place them over something hit them with
paint and the pattern is transferred like you may have sone at some
point with spray can lettering. Iwata's Artool (click
here) has a ton of
great completely re-useable stencil packs such as the Son of Skullmaster
pack I used for both the below bodies that will generate stunning
paint jobs very quick and easy and allow you to get very creative. These are my favorite way to do
skulls or flames. Again you can make your own from anything from
paper to all that overhead projector film you have laying around
somewhere. The green and
black BoLink Coupe body was done by masking out the top to shot with
black. Then painting black ghost images through the paint mask
then backing all that with the green. 
This
was just a ton of layers with Black, Red, Yellow, Orange, and White
used. Any of the other colors you see like greens and some blues
were interntional bleeds of the the other colors. In this case the
bleeds (i.e. a darker color bleeding through a lighter one) create a lot
of depth. For both the BoLink Coupe body and the below ProLine
RockStar I did the go back and forth with layers and colors and didn't
necessarily follow the rule of painting darkest to lightest. 
I
recently repainted a mover's 2-wheel cart in a fire camouflage pattern
using a plastic 6-pack retainer handle for 20oz Coke, anything with a
pattern, can make a cool paint job. Brush
Painting
Don't forget that a good old brush and paint can be used for good effect
such as this Japanese Kanji Character crawler. The large symbol is
the #4 and the flanking fender characters are "Big Power" on
this 4S powered crawler. This was a simple paint job, apply window
masks on the ProLine Helios body, use a sharpie to draw the characters
on the outside of the body (noting I had the body film still on), I
flipped over the body and painted the red characters on the body with a
brush and then backed those with brushed on silver, then shot the who
body black. Looks freaking cool. I am working on a camouflage
paint job with the same technique but a bigger brush. 
Shading
I am not going to give you advice on this because currently I kinda suck
at it. See Iwata's site and they have all sorts of "how to's".
The above RockStar body was the my first attempt at painting with
shading. Colors
Again I am a great engineer, but when it comes to colors, I might as
well be blind - my solution is I let my wife pick out the colors and
they always look good.  Recently
I added a The Color Wheel Company pocket Color Wheel to my paint drawer
and wow, what a difference this has made. The front side tells you
what colors you get from combining colors which is handy if you don't
have a orange for example but have a drop of red and yellow. This
has saved countless "damn I need to run to the hobby shop"
moments. The other side of the color wheel is the color matching
function that lets you find 2-4 colors that actually go together and is
so handy I may buy another one to help me match up clothes. Admit
it, you know you have the moment when you walk out of the bedroom with all the wrong
colors on and your wife says you look like a circus clown. This
would have prevented several hideous paint jobs that from a masking and
stencil perspective were perfect... an of course a few rude comments
from my wife regarding my clothes. Airbrush
vs. Rattlecan
No doubt that airbrush is king, however a two color rattle can paint job
can still look great and will get you started like my above BoLink Coupe
body. An airbrush will
not make you a better artist, it will just help apply paint more
accurately and less expensively over the long haul.  First
off if you paint more than a body a month a decent airbrush setup will
pay for itself in the $$ you will save in paint in about a year. I
bought an Iwata Revolution CR which does everything I have asked it to
do and more and according to some of the pros I have talked with it's so
good and airbrush they even have one - click on the image to go to the
Iwata Site. Expect to pay around $70-90 for the airbrush and then about
the same or a little more for a compressor. Look
for a good internal mix airbrush with a paint cup like the Revolution CR
or smaller. You don't need 4 oz of paint hanging off the airbrush
it will just get in the way and you will generally only use 10-20 paint
drops at a time. I suggest a paint cup with a lid.. I get a little
wild when painting and without it paint would be everywhere. I looked at a lot of airbrushes and the Iwata
Revolution CR price and features were right. A
garage compressor will work, but by the time you buy all the regulators,
moisture traps and connections, you could have just bought a dedicated
air compressor that doesn't make you flintch every time it starts up.
Airbrush compressors are generally SOOOOO quiet. I lucked out on Ebay and bought brand new
AutoMist 2000 $140 25-30PSI
Portable Medical Nebulizer for $25. The
pressure is not adjustable, but it has worked great and even included a
build in moisture trap and is about as loud as a fart into a
pillow. Before you go searching, the Automist 2000 are not
available any longer, but the built in storage area is large enough that
I start my airbrush and hose in it. FYI Nebulizers are just super quite medical grade air
compressors and operate normally in the 25PSI range which is perfect for
airbrushes. I did have to buy a $5 brass adapter for my airhose at
Lowes, but other than that it's been a champ. I have had mine for over
three years and it still works wonderfully. What I like
is that one bottle of airbrush paint does not equal one body like it
spray can brother, instead it equals about half a dozen or more bodies
so airbrush paint in exponentially cheaper.
The airbrush paint you can spray in your basement and is almost
completely fume free which I like most. My dog's breath from across
the room is more annoying. According to the bottle
they are also non-toxic which is again a plus. More
painting tips and pics coming.
This page is a work in progress as basically just got into painting. |
