 jack jack wrote: |
| Is there a way to mask superstrucures for airbrush painting or are the superstructures hand painted? |
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Yes, no, and sorta'
With plastic kits, one of the great ways to paint the sueprstructure one color and the hull another is to build in subassemblies. Build, paint, and detail the superstructure houses off the model, then bring them together and touch-up any paint details which need attention. This method is demonstated in David Griffith's new book "Ship Models from Kits".
You can also apply masks, either commercial ones like Gator masks, paper copies of camouflage diagrams, or freehand masking to the individual superstructure pieces. Then paint assemble and detail. Mike Ashey in his "Basics of Ship Modeling" demonstates applying hundreds of tape snippets to mask the deck andsuperstructure. Quite time consuming.
A few months back in FSM there was an article by Ron Smith on using Silly Putty to mask a Ms12R 'Splotch' camouflage pattern. He used Silly Putty to mask the hull and superstructure
But generally, there is no quick & easy way to effectively mask a superstructure once it is assembled and on a model.
With some kits which have the superstructure molded as part of the main deck, there is the option of airbrushing from below the deck-edge and allowing that to be your mask onthe superstructrue. This will allow you to spray most of the superstructure. You then need to go back and hand paint the lowest quarter.