I dont think I like painting...

I'm not a huge fan of painting either. Spent 4 hours this evening trying to mask off the windows on the ball turret of my B-17. I have the round one done. Badly. The other ones are kicking my ***. Tried putting the tape on and then cutting out the shape of the window. Tried putting the tape on a cutting mat, cutting out the shape of the window and then sticking it to the turret. No joy. It's close, but not close enough. Considering that when I mount the B-17 to my diorama it will never be seen I'm expending an awful lot of effort on this. However I want it to be as good as possible. I may try free handing it with a brush. I have a pack of superfine detail brushes that would work well for that. The other option is to flak damage the damn thing off, but that feels like cheating.

Yes, painting can suck. What's especially frustrating is that once I finally do get everything masked and spray it may come out badly. Painting is like blackjack in a Vegas casino. The odds are stacked against you. Heavily. I've painted models that had an awesome paintjob, then on the final coat the can spits and ruins the whole thing. Or the airbrush decides it has Tourette syndrome.

When I stop and think about it my blackjack analogy is actually pretty good. The longer you play, the worse your odds. I've never screwed up a primer coat, but the final color coat, or clear coat. That's when I lose.

Often I've entertained the idea of dropping my models off at a body shop and paying someone to paint them... Again, cheating.

Brush painting on the other hand, I like that. I have lots of paintbrushes and a good magnifying lamp. I can be entertained for hours painting things by hand. My Microbrush Superfines are awsome for putting a drop of red on a fire extinguisher, a smidge of silver on a knob, or a dollop of aluminum on a handle. Very rewarding and fun to get it just right. It sucks that large surfaces like fuselages, hulls, bodies, chassis, etc. have to be airbrushed or rattle canned.

Ship modeling is fun because that's all brush painting. I have never seen the crew of a Coast Guard or Navy ship paint their vessels with anything other than a brush or a roller. So when I build a ship model that's what I use. In fact the only time I saw a sprayer used was on the hull of the WAGB11 in dry dock at Todd shipyard. It was being used by the yard birds to recoat the hull in that black paint that kills barnacles.

Spent 4 hours this evening trying to mask off the windows on the ball turret of my B-17.

I've built that kit at least a half-dozen times, including the one on the bench right now, plus I've got two more in stash, and the Revell F-Model... I've never once painted the ball turret any other way besides freehand.  In fact, I paint 90% of my "glasswork" freehand... The trick is paint consistency and brush point.  Super fine 000000 brushes are worthless for it.  A good, high-quality "0" or "00" is the best brush, IMHO. It holds enough paint to allow a long, sweeping line to be done, with the proper coverage.  Another method is to mask along ONE frame and paint that, then set it aside to dry.  Later, mask another, paint that, set it aside again, repeating until it's all done.  Much less tedious, IMHO...  Buy a high-end brush or two, use them only for your fine detail work, and above all, TAKE CARE OF THE POINT.  That's what you're paying for... Artist's supply stores are where you should look for brushes, by the way.. No hobby shop carries the selection you need to have in your brush-arsenal... Grumbacher brushes are my personal favorite, along with the Bob Ross series of brushes... Spendy, but worth it.  If you have a Hobby Lobby, the 40% coupons will take the sting outta the prices...

Another way to avoid burn-out on painting is do more mono-color work... Intricate painting with complcated patterns is a way to increase your blood-pressure exponentially, IMHO... Take a break from the camo-patterns and knock out an OD over Grey once and a while...

We all have this mental picture in our heads of the completed work, and many times what ends up on the shelf is far less than what we pictured.   I think that's largely due to the desire to recreate other's work which may be beyond you skill-level at the time, and you wind up disappointed in yours becasue you don't know how the other guy did it... Some guys are able to spend 4 hours masking an item that takes less than a minute to paint, I'm not one of them.. So I freehand with acrylics... I use acrylics to paint glass so I can go back with a chisel-tip toothpick and clean up any boo-boos... I see some guys buying canopy masks as well.. I don't, vut others do... For me, they're an expense that I'm not willing to undertake... Not when I got gobs of tape laying around...

Overall, I approach painting as the best part though... It's a science as much as art, and I gotta admit, my work doesn't bear close examination... But then again, I don't build in 1/48th scale or 1/35th scale to photograph the work in 1/6th scale...  My work is done to be viewed from at least a foot away, and since you can't focus on anything closer to your eye than 4-5 inches, you don't need to be THAT neat, unless, like I said, your main purpose is close-up photography...  I don't offer my guests a magnifying glass when they view my work, nor do they get to pick stuff up and examine it with a flashlight...  Since all my work is diorama and shadow box, that works out pretty well... In fact, for my shadow box work, I don't even paint what isn't going to be seen.  I only paint what will be seen through the window... Like figures with their backs to the viewer... They won't have any painting, or very little, on the unseen areas... Waste of time, IMHO...

Dunno what to tell ya about your problem, Smeagol... I've noticed that you don't show much work, so I can imagine that you burn out on a kit more often than not... Best I could ecommend is that you work less on all filling and sanding, getting bogged down, and get to the finishing stage sooner...  It's apparent that you don't compete in contests, and no one outside the modeling community would give a hoot if you have some flaws in the builds... 

Paint the sucker and move on to another one, man... 

Grumbacher brushes are great quality. I have about 27 of them. I also have a bunch of Imex brushes (about 15), good quality and I like the handle. I keep a supply of Model Master brushes on hand. Decent quality (the bristles stay in) and cheap enough that they can be used for spreading glue or other tasks that will ruin a brush. The cheap no-name brushes are worthless. The bristles seem to come out and stick to the surface I've just tried to paint with them. Testors brushes are pretty junky too. The bristles stay in but they don't keep a shape worth a damn.

I'm just going to mount the ball turret in my third hands and go for it.

The models I like most are the ones I brush painted because that's what I enjoy doing. I'm seriously contemplating brush painting the bare metal finish on my B-17.

smeagol the vile wrote:

Latley, I have been thinking, analising what I have done, where most of my builds are... It seems to me that I love putting the kits together, fixing seams, working with my hands, making the thing, but I always seem to stop when it comes to painting on some kits, it takes me FOREVER to get painting done...

I was exactly the same...  Until I started weathering in a serious manner (outside of just washing the panel lines)...  Once I internalized that the "final coat of paint" did not mean that the kit was done, painting became much less stressful and more enjoyable.  It's amazing what good weathering does for a model in bringing the entire subject together.  A coat of heavily thinned base, strategically sprayed tones of the subject's color, dry pigments, filters, washes, etc. all combine to really do wonders to (at least in my case) what I thought would be a substandard paint-job...  As for painting the glass on an aircraft, I prefer Tamiya Tape, a new blade, good lighting, and realization that I am not going to get that Devastator perfect in one pass - it may take two or three sessions to get it to my level of satisfaction and lots of patience but the results are worth it... 

Oh, its not an issue or a problem.  I quite enjoy working with my hands, fixing the seams, making it look like it should. 

I also work on multiple kits at one time, and I like to take my time, I hate working with putty, I hate having to get it out onto the platter and smear it on, makes a mess.  So it takes me a while to get to the painting stage, then theres always a painting issue, problem with the AB, no correct color, etc, etc.

It comes down to im lazy, and I hate not being able to just work on something, I hate having to set up the airea, get the paint ready, make sure the AB is clean, plug it in, mask, start to paint, wait for it to dry.  With the seams and such its just, grab kit, grab file, and get to work.

tempestjohnny wrote:

I like doing it all.  The only part I don't like is cleaning my airbrush after use.  I used to avoid using it so I didn't have to clean it.  Now I say "the model will look so much better sprayed then brushed"

In fact, cleaning a paintbrush properly, even a 3/0, can take as long, if not longer than  cleaning an airbrush. If you don't get every last particle of paint out of your brush, then the performance of the brush suffers.