Practical soft edge mask

I've always had lots of success with the old poster putty and paper pattern trick.  Rather than holding the paper mask with your fingers, roll the poster putter (or some use silly putty) into thin "snakes" and apply it to your model.  Then take your paper pattern and apply it to the top of the putty so that the paper is held only a milimeter or two off the model.  Spray your paint making sure your AB is pretty close to a 90 degree angle from the surface.  That should give you a fairly nice soft demarcation line.  If there's any slight overspray, I usually go back and rub it out with a pencil eraser.  That does the trick for me.  Hope this helps!

Eric

PS.  Welcome to the forum!

Blue Tack, silly putty, playdough and clay all make great soft edge masks, just roll it out into a thin rope and arrange on the model. You can use tape or paper to cover the areas you don't want to paint. The diameter of your rope controls the degree of diffusion. Oh, and don't let silly putty sit too long on the model. It is soft enough that it will settle in and around objects, like hand rails, cleats, machine gun barrels, etc., making it difficult to remove.

-dave

I suspect the easiest way would actually be to just practice withe your airbrush.  I have Badger 200NH which is a single action version of the Anthem, and it is well within its capabilities to to do free hand camo on armor.  My first use actually was a 1/72 Tiger with a typical 3 color German camo that came out well.  The trick is of course to balance the variables of air pressure, needle position, spraying distance from the model, and paint thinning.  It's certainly harder to learn on a double action Anthem than on a single action 200NH because you have to get your needle position set while you're spraying on your model, but with some practice on plastic milk jugs and maybe a sacrificial kit if you have one, you could probably get the hang of it reasonably quickly.

Good luck of whatever route you choose!    

ABARNE wrote:

I suspect the easiest way would actually be to just practice withe your airbrush.  I have Badger 200NH which is a single action version of the Anthem, and it is well within its capabilities to to do free hand camo on armor.  My first use actually was a 1/72 Tiger with a typical 3 color German camo that came out well.  The trick is of course to balance the variables of air pressure, needle position, spraying distance from the model, and paint thinning.  It's certainly harder to learn on a double action Anthem than on a single action 200NH because you have to get your needle position set while you're spraying on your model, but with some practice on plastic milk jugs and maybe a sacrificial kit if you have one, you could probably get the hang of it reasonably quickly. Good luck of whatever route you choose!

Amen to that! You have a good tool, learn to use it. Practice, practice, then pratcie some more.

One thing to do is point the brush into the the area being painted to reduce overspray. With a fine tip nad practice, you should be able to get an almost hard line even in 1/72 scale.