Pre-shading

hey Mitch! Welcome to the forums!

Pre-shading is where you airbrush the panel line highlights on BEFORE you put the main colors on. I don't do it myself but it does work. From what I understand, when you spray the main body color you do it in several light coats as to let the pre-shading still stand out a bit. If there are multiple colors in the camo scheme (i.e. spitfire with the earth brown and dark green) once the top coat is on you mask and preshade the panel lines again where the other color is going over.

Personally I prefer a wash or nothing at all to preshading... just personaly preference... washes and pre-shading both look equally as good!

As far as airbrushes, you can't go wrong moving to a double action.. there are a lot of good ones out there... if you go back on this page and maybe a few pages back there are a lot of posts about good airbrushes. You can see whcih ones sound good to ya...

What kind of modeling do you do? I am assuming aircraft because of the preshading question.. anything else? That can affect which airbrush choice is right for ya too...

Tom:

Thanks for the input. I model military aircraft mostly, about 99% of what I do. I used to be a firefighter, so I've got a 1/25 AMT American LaFrance fire engine that I plan to do, with some major scratchbuilding. I don't do any themes, just what I like, which is F-4 Phantoms, F-4 Corsairs, F-14's, WWII German and US stuff...my best kits are the ones I've built for a couple of people. I love Hasegawa 1/48 modern jets...I just bought an F-14 on eBay. Woo hoo.

Welcome Mitch,

I preshaded the Me262 Nachtjaeger in my sig, take a look below. I really love this technique as I feel it really adds depth and realism. I sprayed along all the panel lines with a darker gray, and then filled in the areas in between with the base coat. All done at very low pressure with acrylics.

Don't know much about the Paasche VL, but I used the Paasche H for a while, I've since switched to the Badger 360 (double action) with no regrets. Good to have you with us in the FSM forums.

Regards,

Steve

I have a Paasche VL & it's a nice ab. It's well built, well balanced, sprays a fairly fine line & is fairly easy to clean.
However, I bought a used Iwata Eclipse a while back & use that one almost exclsively now. It's lighter, slightly easier to clean & sprays a finer line. I still use the Paasche for large areas, though.

Chris

These lads seem to have you covered on the pre-shading bit, so I'll just add my bit on the Paasche VL. I've used one for nearly two years now and have been very happy with it. I can get some very thin lines out of it, and it does a great job of overall coverage. I've sprayed Tamiya, Gunze, Vallejo and model master paints with good results. Someone might be able to recommend a better AB but I like the VL.

Best I found is to hit all the panel lines on the model with Vallejo flat black or grey depending on the coverage color then fill it in as Crockett said. only thing different I do is add percetages of white to the coverage color as I get near the top of the model to weather the color before all thesludge washes and what not. You will see this on my Gladdy when I get her posted.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Well then a video must be worth 100,000 words.

http://www.scaleworkshop.com/workshop/video4bg_2.htm

it's a great series of videos....all free! Have fun.
BTW. the main page is www.scaleworkshop.com/workshop for ALL the videos.
I have them all saved on my hard drive for quick easy access.

Jim

Preshading is a very nice way, in addition to washes, to enhance panel lines. I usually spray flat black accross panel lines, crevices, edges, etc, then use several thin coats of the basecoat to paint the model, allowing some of the flat black to show through. After that accent with wash as usual. I think you'll like the results.

To jpelosi, thanks for the link. I found the Testors links to be quite informative. I'm looking forward to working on my newly acquired Hasegawa 1/48 F-14A, you know, the 2,400 piece - uh, I mean 240 piece kit.

Thanks to all your replies!