Hello!
I am a beginner when it comes to airbrushing, and yesterday I had a lot of frustration painting one of my models, a sci-fi aircraft. The airbrushing went OK, eventhough I made a lot of mistakes. That's OK, because I know approximately what I did wrong, and I can practice to avoid it on later projects.
However, when it came to the chipping I was really frustrated. I took a sponge, dipped it in some dark rustbrown paint and dabbed it gently over selected parts of the model. The result was weird, I thought it looked like the paint chips were "hovering" over the surface, not looking realistic at all. I have no idea what I did wrong. Here is a link to my blog:
https://brutalbrutes.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/centaur/
You can see a photo of my previous project where I think that the chipping is a little bit better, but still not homogenizing with the rest of the paintjob in a convincing way. On my next project, I plan on using the hairspray technique with chipping fluid instead.
So, this rant boils down to a couple of questions:
1. Do you have any comments, hints or pitfalls when it comes to the sponge chipping technique?
2. After having chipped away paint using the hairspray technique, is it necessary to seal the model with varnish before moving on to washing, filtering etc. to avoid further unwanted damage to the paintjob?
Thanks in advance! 