Custom carriers from OOB's and painted pieces

Here’s another pic in dimmer light, which is a better comparison to the before picture above.

The silver pops nicely. Before, in the same lighting situation, I couldn’t see most of the border lines at all.

I used the Edding 5300 silver acrylic paint marker with a 1-2 mm tip
The silver seems to really catch what little light there is in the room.

As the paint the marker ran low of paint it was harder and harder to control, so I reccomend just stopping and using a fresh paint marker if this happens. A few of the last lines I did are fatter than I would like because of this.
But the overal result is a huge improvement.

IMG_20230304_154631.jpg

@cavestone I also use vallejo paints. The key question here is are you brush painting, or using an airbrush, or both?

The Vallejo paints have a “Model Air” line that comes pre-thinned. You can buy a thinning product (from them) to add to the “Model Color” series paints, which are the exact same thing, just more concentrated and thicker.

If you’ve never used an airbrush, its a bit finicky–it requires regular cleaning and a without a good brush and compressor the paint will flow very inconsistently. The process will be very frustrating unless you use the pre-thinned paints because the brush can only blow paint that is within a certain set of thickness parameters that are difficult to achieve, especially if you are trying to mix the air in the brush’s reserve or in small quantities. That’s why having copies of both Model Air and Model Color is fine by me–unlike Warhammer 40K I’m using primarily earthy colors, greens, dunkelgelb and dunkelgrau… other AFV and camoflage colors and so i don’t need a collection of primary or bright colors.

But I recommend it. The airbrush creates a sublime, beautiful layer and slight mix variations can be used to create shadows, grades, etc. Then you go back over with your brush, adding highlights, lines, details. Then, back over again with a drybrushing…then back to the airbrush to blast Flory Wash all over it.

Can’t see your photos, you can’t post photos until you have a certain post count. I wouldn’t use water to thin paints, they are water soluble but the mix and viscosity is all wrong (though water is obv. cheap and easy to clean up)

As for oil-based paints, these require thinner to clean up, they are much more difficult to drybrush with and are not used for airbrushing. The days of the old testors paints is long behind us–even apple barrel paints are easier to work with and cheaper. The early painting methods were much more about glomming thick layers of paint onto lead miniatures and the modern approach with water based paint and a series of different techniques creates much better results.

@siredblood:

@GeneralHandGrenade:

I couldn’t find any magnets that thin. I just redid mine yesterday and had to use thicker ones. Good job Sired.

I don’t know if they have Home Depot in Canada, but that’s where I got it, if not, you can find it here :

http://www.homedepot.com/p/MASTER-MAGNETICS-3-4-in-x-26-ft-Magnetic-Tape-with-Dispenser-96774/204752648?cm_mmc=Shopping%7cTHD%7cG%7c0%7cG-BASE-PLA-D25H-Hardware%7c&gclid=CN-u3In81tECFUi2wAodQuQIAA&gclsrc=aw.ds

It has bad reviews lol, but it works good, just don’t stick to anything. However the drop of super glue seems to work, as they have never fell off.

Thanks for the comment cyanight, all your magnetic mods are pretty amazing!

We do have Home Depot (all over the place here), but they don’t seem to carry Magnetic Tape.,… well, they do, but it’s this stuff : https://www.homedepot.ca/en/home/p.12-x-10-magnetic-tape.1000418120.html?autoSuggest=pip which wouldn’t work as it’s a LOT thicker.

I HAVE however seen that stuff at Micheals Arts and Crafts. You’re right, it doesn’t stick well (or at all) so superglue is a must.

So very true. When I first started painting my aircraft I had to include decal roundels for the players to distinguish the pieces from one another. My naval units are painted mostly with a color scheme for playability except for the capital ships like the Carriers and popular Battleships. All of them have a decal or flag to show which nation they belong too. I actually replaced the OOB British Cruisers because I thought they looked too close in size with the destroyers. I ended up replacing with some ships I found on Shapeways. The biggest problem I had with naval units is that they can exist in the same seazone with enemy pieces unlike land territories. Because of this I decided to keep the subs, destroyers, cruisers and non unique battleships following a color scheme. There are so many colors in the spectrum though we should be able to come up with a solution that will make them look more historical yet keep the pattern or color scheme for the nation. I really would love to paint all the ships historically and maybe I will revisit them again someday. Every time I go back and repaint my pieces I seem to get better at it. Or at least I think I do, hehe.

@DiscoKnekt:

Nice table! Really like the NO cards! We have a problem that people tend to forget what NOs they have so we need some kind of reminder, maybe this is solution! Is there any chance you could share the file for the cards so that i save some time typing them? :)

My NO card deck will be available soon, I will let you know by PM how you can get one when they’re ready.

@CWO:

@John:

Congratulations to you, and KNP! :-D

Hear hear!

Appreciate it Marc! :-)

Hmm interesting cynight…. I recieved 4 hurricane fighters with my set… Is that standard with the order?  Thanks for the boiling water method I will try that this weekend and hopefully be Painting some units this weekend :)

I made these 5 carriers from Pearl Harbor Akagi,  Kaga,  Soryu,  Hiryu and Zuikaku.  I didn’t include the Shokaku because like the Shinano its a bland looking carrier.  Strange that we used the Shinano sculpt but chose not to name or represent it, lol.

I posted the process I used and other pics in a different thread.

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=34206.0