How To Get Started Airbrush Painting Your Model Kits!

Hey everybody, it's Norm from Tested and we got a really special treat for you. We're on location today. We're at Urbank's House of Hobbies, one of the great hobby shops, certainly in California. Love going to places like this. There aren't enough places like this. And this is John Tamkin. John, you're the founder and owner of Mission Models. You guys make model paints. You've been making model paints for how long now? The paint line itself has been around for, I'd say, a little over six years now. And so that was something that we were going to develop many, many years ago. Couldn't come up with the right formulas, the right technologies and so forth. Put it on the back burner. And then many years later, I decided to go back and sort of revisit that and kind of just, you know, start a line, so to speak, and we developed the paint. Amazing. And paint is what we're talking about today, because, you know, we build models at Tested. You know, a lot of you build models as well. More people are getting into 3D printing. They're building very easy, accessible, you know, Star Wars kits, Gundam kits, which come tinted out of the box. They look OK when you put them together. But it always feels like that daunting next step to put some paint on it. And so we wanted to get some advice and talk about the process of how to get started painting your models. So there's trial and error involved. There's the learning process. And the more you do it and the more consistent you are, the better you get and the easier and the more second nature it becomes. There's a million different brands of paint, styles of paints. There's hobby paints, there's house paints, I mean, craft paints. I mean, paint's been around forever. You know, you got synthetic pigments, you got organic pigments and all that kind of stuff, lacquers, enamels, acrylics. Absolutely. It's endless. Yeah. Our line comprises of two hundred and twelve, you know, different items, you know, paint, primers, metallics, weathering colors, thinners, poly mix additive. I mean, all that kind of stuff. So it adds up there to the two hundred and twelve right now. What we find is that and I know from experience as well, is that people tend to gravitate towards the same colors. So the line is comprehensive, but it's not excessive. We've basically focused on core subject matter. So, of course, you've got, you know, your, you know, allied armor, German aircraft, German armor, you know, you know, U.S. modern jets. But there's a lot of unique colors, you know, construction equipment colors. I mean, it really is. Like I said, it's comprehensive. So colors, ultimately colors are colors. And you have to kind of think outside the box. So just because, you know, for example, this bottle here says interior intermediate blue FS three, five, one, six, four. This color is amazing for a million different things. This here happens to be our highway yellow, which is technically old cat yellow from 1930 to 1990, essentially. But it's a great color. You know, it's muted. It's great for off-road vehicles. It's great for model railroading. It's great for sci-fi. I mean, you can use these colors for anything. But at the same time, a lot of Gundams, on the other hand, the the basis of the colors stem from military colors. Yeah. So if you take a traditional Zaku in the dark, that kind of pale green, dark green, two-tone color. Yeah. Those are both RAF colors. It's perfect because like when those series were coming out, you're talking about both the historical base models, but also maybe something out of fiction, out of science fiction. When those series were coming out, when people were making Star Wars and Star Trek, the model makers were pulling from those same colors as well. So you're saying there's maybe not need to develop something specific for that because you're kind of going to the source. Correct. And so someone, you know, built their first model, maybe built a couple of models, did a couple of 3D prints. They walk into a shop. You know, what are they picking up? They're picking up primers, picking up base colors. And you guys also make some mixes. You know, what are the kind of the essentials that people should be picking up to start? Well, you know, first things first. And it's a good question. Always use the manufacturer's recommended thinner because they work best with the product. If you're starting out, I recommend thinner or poly mix additive. So this is basically a polyurethane mix additive that goes into the paint. You mix it into the paint, approximately 10% to volume of paint. And what the poly does is it turns the paint into a urethane based automotive grade acrylic finish. And it's absolutely tough as nails. We we put into everything that we spray. Now, Mission Models paint can be brush painted as well. But whenever we, you know, airbrush anything, we always put the poly in. It's like butter on bread. Why wouldn't you put butter on bread? It's a long lasting. It's just it. Yeah. And so what it does is it when it dries from the inside out, it's very easy to put into the paint. Right. So what it then does is it increases your durability. So that's great for, you know, war gamers, fantasy gamers, model railroad, anybody that's handling a model. Right. Right. And it does take, you know, 24, maybe 24 hours to technically cure within the paint. But what's also great about the poly is that people that are doing 3D printing also, you know, you want to present print, filament print. You know, this will allow you to paint on more challenging materials such as the resins, filaments, lexan, leather, all sorts of stuff. I mean, stuff that you're not even supposed to paint and it's not. Right. So that's what's great about, you know, the poly. And then, you know, picking a selection of paints, you guys have 212 different colors. Is there a base set of colors you recommend? And people start with that and a mix from that. Or is it kind of depending on the genre that they're they're painting in? What's what's your advice there? We put together the line very, very carefully based on what we know people use for the most part. But we organize everything by segment. So all your metallics are right here. There's 10 different metallics. Then all your for the most part, all your what we call primary colors, even though brown's not really technically a color of the rainbow. We call them primaries because those are your base colors. You know, black, white, red, brown, orange, green, that kind of stuff. You know, you're just your core basic colors. But then it goes, you know, all your, you know, World War Two German aircraft are kind of grouped together. You know, Allied Armor, German armor, U.S. modern jets, World War Two aircraft. I mean, it's so when you go to pick out your paint and with the, you know, FS, you know, RAL, RAL or RLM codes, they're all there so you can easily select what you're looking for and easily find it. We make it as easy as possible and as organized as possible on the display rack, especially for, you know, someone that's just starting out. Yeah, they can just go and be like, oh, look at all these olive drabs. Oh, look at all these World War Two aircraft colors or whatever it might be. Pearls, iridescence, color change. I mean, you name it, it's pretty much all there. Trust the reference number, trust the reference sheet that you're getting out with your model kit and grab the section. You don't need to have 100 bottles to start. You can get whatever you need. No, no. Recommended. And well, I'd love to get a, you know, get a demo. Because like you mentioned, we did grab a model kit off the shelf here and want to show and I want to see how easy it is to mix the paint and get it on some plastic. Yeah, that'd be great. Let's do it. OK, John, so we took out a couple of pieces of Bandai model kit. This is Boba Fett's Slave One. We see that comes out pretty tinted. So there's already some color on it. And you found some colors that basically match that. That's going to give the modeler a chance to just take their own approach to it. Correct. And what we're going to do is we are going to paint this part, which is part of the I guess the upper superstructure, right? We're going to use MMP number 80, which is RF Underside Sky number 610. But you can see also we have matched up where it says Mecca pale green. Right. Because this is also a great color for the Zaku's. And it happens to be. Looks great. Wow. Yep. Right. But what we're going to do is we're going to prime first. So let's get started with the priming. And we've got our mission models gray primer here. Now, we have a YouTube channel which has, you know, mixing ratios, tutorials. You know, you know, the tutorials are like an hour long each. But for this, you know, demo, I'm just going to really show you how easy it really is. So I'm going to just squirt some primer in there. The primer needs to be thinned. You can see how thick it is out of the bottle. Right. So I'm going to take our primer. And for the sake of this demo, we're just going to, you know, put some drops in there. And I'm going to just mechanically stir it with my hand like this. We mix everything in one ounce epoxy mixing cups. It's really the way to go. You really, in theory, don't want to mix in the airbrush because you don't get a thorough and proper mix. And you can kind of see some people go by the skim milk, this or that. I'm just doing this all by eye. And to me, that looks really good. Really, to get your absolutely best mixes is to do like this. Let it sit for 10, 15 minutes. So everything emulsifies and it's thorough. I've got my primer here. And what I always say is test before you spray. So just I'm using a Mac valve here. All right. What are you looking for here when you're looking for a nice, even, smooth spray pattern? That's what I'm looking for. If my PSI is too low, let's just say it's going to either going to get nothing or it's just going to start to sputter because you don't have enough air pressure. So I will adjust it so I get that nice, even pass. So this is great primer. I'm probably sure I'll spray my fingers here and we're going to just spray a nice, even what we call light, wet, methodical coats. You can see how it just covers right up. This goes on like a nice second skin. It'll shrink down. Still retain all that detail. Retain all the detail. So you can see how fast I'm going. Now, the primer will technically, technically speaking, be dry in 12 hours. But it doesn't mean that you can't accelerate the drying with the cool air and keep on working. But it's thoroughly cured, scientifically cured that 12 hours, give or take. All right. And as usual, spraying right over my fingers. It's been an issue my whole life. Now, the most important thing is the maintenance of your tools. So this is just a squirt bottle with water. And we're going to take a little bit of thinner, which also works as a cleaner and get thinner in there. Primer is very, very durable. And then we'll just kind of wipe out any residual. And we're going, we're going fast. But you can see it's clean and it's ready to go. A lot of people have asked about, you know, dry sanding and so forth. You can see that. I mean, that is like just really smooth. I mean, that's like a second skin. Have to be careful because it's not thoroughly dry. But yeah, you can. I like to dry sand personally. Like if you had any anomalies, any kind of little whatever, a piece of dust, whatever, you know, you dropped it. Picked up a bunch of stuff from the carpet. You could just go ahead and, you know, sand it right out. The smoother your finish, the smoother your base coats, the better your top coats and your overall finish. So our next step, right, is let's see, we are going to do the green. Here's what I'm really curious about, that mixing of the poly. Yep. We are absolutely going to put that in there. So this is the RF underside sky. The code would be 610. The technical code is MMP number 80. So I'm just going to go like this, squirt a little bit in there. Right. A little paint. I like to use enough to work with. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to take our poly. Right. And I'm just going to go like that. So you can see that in there. It's about a 10% ratio. About that. You know, just a little bit. I just put a little bit more in for, you know, a good measure. Why not? At what point does it start to be not the consistency you want or? Well, if you I mean, you can over thin it. You never want to thin your, you know, the paint or at least our paints. 50 50, meaning one to one, you know, everything is so powerful that it'll thin it down just like food dye. And you want to you don't want runs. All right. Pour a little bit in there. Test shot. You want to spray through any residual from your cleaning. Get rid of any water, excess thinner, anything like that. Because when if you you don't spray that through on your next color, you'll hit that you'll hit the model with it. So we are going to go back and we are going to do this upper superstructure, right? Nice, even. We like to call light, wet coats so you can see where it looks shiny, but it's not running, but it's not dry. If you spray from too far away, you're going to over end up over atomizing the paint, which means that it's going to dry in the air and you're going to lose your adhesion property. So it's very, very quick. Very, very easy. Kind of like a wet sidewalk. A wet sidewalk looks dark because it's wet. As the water evaporates out of the concrete, it'll go back to its lighter state. Well, that's the same thing with the paint. When it's wet, it's going to appear to be a little bit darker as it cures. It'll dry to its proper, proper color. How many coats do you feel comfortable applying before you feel like you might lose some panel line detail? A lot. Yeah. Seriously, a lot. You'll know, but you can go with proper thinning, which you could see how easy it was. I mean, all of that's still there. Again, we are going to clean. I like to use a hard stream. These are just water bottles and this is just straight water. So spray out the bulk out of the cup. All right. Spray that through. I mean, that's basically clean with just a little bit of water. We'll go in and wipe that out and then. But, you know, to flush through anything else, it's a little bit of our thinner. Spray that through. You know, PSI is also very important when you're spraying. You want to spray the paint between 10 and 15 PSI. You know, if you have a larger needle nozzle set up on your airbrush, you know, you'll you'll want to go a little bit higher. You know, kind of a sort of like a garden hose principle that if you have a, you know, large opening, you might need more, you know, water pressure. So that's the green or the red. We're going to use the German red oxide, which is MMP number 13. And we take a nice fresh mixing cup. OK, and I'm just going to show you how easy it is like that. I mean, that's plenty and a little bit more. I'm just eyeballing everything. Polly, that's the practice. That's how you do it. It's called time, practice and patience experience. I'll even add a little bit more. Why not? Paint is very, very, very forgiving. And it's going to a little bit. Yeah. Don't stress about the ratios, but know those hard limits. Yes. Now, this could possibly be a little bit thin, maybe. But let's just say it's a little bit too thin. You can tell by looking at it. Let's add a little more paint. It's like I say, people waste paint. I waste paint. We always paint. If you're going to buy it, you got to use it. And I can tell you, I won't use all that. Yeah. What's the question I have as well? You know, people buy these ounce bottles of paint. They wonder how long it's going to last. Sometimes paint sits because they're buying a bunch of colors. You know, how should people store their paints? What's what's the process of making sure they do last? Well, you have to take care of all paint, no matter what. All chemicals. It doesn't matter what it is. Now, you know, with our paints, with proper care and storage, right? In a normal working environment, normal temperature, you know, there really isn't a shelf life, but you really, you know, you have to be aware. And it doesn't matter if it's a lacquer, if it's an enamel, anything. You just have to maintain, you know, your your your supplies. Now, the poly, for example, now you don't want to let these freeze and you don't want to let them cook off in, you know, extreme high heat, you know, for extended period of time, you know, leaving them in your garage, you know, where it gets 110 degrees. If you happen to be somewhere like that or letting them continuously freeze on end, you know, in a cold region, it's just proper maintenance. It's really what it's about. You know, we have bottles that we still use from 2015, 2016. A lot of people do, and it's great now with the poly. Again, you don't want to let it freeze. You don't want to let it cook over. These are all different types of chemicals, and they all have their own, you know, basic properties. That's just the nature of poly, because once they freeze, you can't bring them back. And that's the same thing with like yellow glues. You can't let yellow glue freeze. CA glues will kick over in high heat. So chemicals are chemicals and they have to be treated as as as such. And mix it well for you, Gordon. Yep. Yep. Shake it. Mix it. You know, if you're in a cold region, and you're the paint feels slightly how they put this coagulated kind of like chilled bacon fat, it's the only way I can kind of put it. Or like if you had melted butter and you put in the fridge and it starts to kind of solidify, the paint's not going to solidify, but you can warm it back up to room temp and it'll, you know, it'll be great. No, no issues at all. So and you can do, you know, nice fine lines with it. You know, no clogging, a lot of misconceptions about acrylics. And I guess it just this is why we use, you know, the most modern, you know, resins and carriers. For this for this reason, I always spray, do a little test before you actually spray your next part. Let's say it's very humid out or you get the windows open. It's just super dry. You just want to kind of double check. We happen to have a perfect environment today. So the temperature is great. Everything's great. Low humidity. Everything's good. So no issues. You can see how wet that is. Yeah. So now don't try and necessarily cover in just one pass. I'm going to hit this with the hairdryer real quick and then we'll do our second pass. Yeah. So there you go. There's your green and the poly. And depending on, you know, apply, you can feel that. Go ahead. Well, it's still tacky, but, you know, once it cools a bit because I was using, you know, slightly warm air, we could keep on, you know, we could keep on building, keep on painting. Doing all that kind of stuff. You can mask right over it with proper. You know, when you get that nice, light, wet finish. Right. That's what also gives you your adhesion properties. If you spray back here, you know, the paint's drying in the air. If your PSI is too high. Again, you could be over atomizing at the tip. If you're getting what's called bounce back and you're getting clouds, your PSI is too high. One of the best ways and just real quick and, you know, I guess we'll wrap it up. One of the best ways to determine your distance is. OK, so I have air, right? You can maybe hear the air here. It's changed. Yeah, you can actually hear the difference. Hear that? Now it starts spraying. Beautiful. See, there's no clouds. There's nothing. That's great. I didn't notice just listening to the way the air comes out of the airbrush and hits the model. OK, back here. Right there. Right. There's just kind of your sweet spot. That's great. Wow. That's really cool, John. So I mean, time, practice and patience. Yeah. But you're always learning. And there's people out there that will support you and help you. And, you know, when you're asking questions and that's just a little, you know, thing, if I go in here and I sit here like this, I can end up with all this buildup. You see now it's like pooling up here. But if I let it just sit, it'll sell. Everything will sell well. Well, usually. Yes. Yeah. Time, practice and patience. We'll remember that for sure. John, thank you so much for the demonstration. It really was simple and fast, like you said. And people can go to your YouTube channel, Mission Models YouTube channel and see more tutorials. Absolutely. And we have tons of FAQs on our website. There's lots of people out there that are using the paint to watch this little demo. Like I said, the FAQs, the YouTube channel, all that good stuff. Yeah. And so this is really fun. You know, I really want to say, you know, thank you. Thank you.