b - Washing the Glider

Finalist Jana Wang continues her log:

November 2

I took some pictures earlier this week of my paint table. I paint in the kitchen, it's the only area with tile floor in case of spills. I paint at my dining table. (My house, my rules!) I have two cats who like to help. They check all the figures each night after I finish, and drink any leftover paint water.

For me, the basic paint tools include newspaper, a water dish, a pallette, paper towel, some toothpicks or stir sticks, and the paint and brushes. I also work under a 60w desk lamp. I prefer newspaper to plastic because it absorbs drips and glue. I mix colors on a scrap of plastic packaging or the lid from a margarine tub. The toothpicks are useful for stirring and poking at stuff, and applying tiny dots of color. I have a paper towel for cleaning the brush and absorbing extra water if the paint is too thin. I wipe off extra paint right onto my newspaper.

Clean water is important to me and the way I paint. It's a holdover from the days of painting with oil-based enamels, when you did not want to swish your brush in the thinner after each color or you'd soon end up with a jar of grey sludge. My cleaning technique is to dip the brush in water and quickly wipe it off on the paper towel (or newspaper) and repeat until no more color comes off. Then I pat it dry on the towel (and if that leaves a watery paint mark, the brush ain't clean yet!).

When I wet the brush for the next color, I know I'm not picking up the previous color from the water. It can be especially noticeable changing from dark to light shades, and when working with metallics. Metallic flake in your paint water will creep into everything else you paint afterward.

November 7

Today was a bad arthritis day. Fortunately I didn't need to do any serious detail work on the flyer. It was time to add the brown wash on the fabric wings to give it that "old" look and bring out some of the texture on the sculpt.

I mixed Reaper Walnut Brown about 1:8 with water to make a wash - four big drops of water from the brush and a dab of brown paint, not very scientific - and spread that evenly over the wing surfaces, making sure to get the edges and ends. If you don't get the entire surface at the same time a wash can leave lines where it dries, and it's hard to paint over them. I use a fairly large #2 watercolor brush for washes and brush it on each wing section in turn, taking care to not have it too wet. You don't want it to be dripping off the model. I also put wash on the ropes I painted, to bring out some of the depth in those as well.

After painting on the wash, I left the wings under my lamp to dry. I have an old pint-sized can of wood stain that I use as a drying stand under the 60w bulb of my desk lamp. It's particularly useful for speeding the drying of washes and large covered areas like cloaks and bases.

The next step will be to paint the Dwarven pilot, and I'm considering a blue color scheme as it will contrast more with the dark wood frame and brighten up the look of the piece considerably.

November 8

I add a brown wash to the brass of the cannon. This will soften the look of it and bring out some of the detail without making it look too dirty (as a black wash would do).

Using Americana's Admiral Blue - a dark indigo/denim color - I paint the pilot's pants. I add a touch of white to lighten the blue and blend a shade for his shirt. When the shirt dries, I use the dark blue again in a wash on the shirt.

Since the pilot is so tiny, this is another area where less is more. I'm careful to use very small amounts of paint on the tip of the brush, to cover the figure without glopping and without overpainting the other areas I have already covered. I'm not perfect - and I will have to do some touch up later - but overall it makes for a neater paint job and less stress to be careful the first time around.

I take a few minutes to adjust the fit of the flyer's wings. Since the base coat of paint is on the frame, I will be able to tell where the fit is too tight when I put the pieces together in a dry test. Wherever paint rubs off is where I need to scrape away metal for a better fit. I use a craft knife to remove metal a sliver at a time from the wing frame (where the gas tank of the flamethrower rubs against it), and I also remove a sliver of metal from the center-bottom of the wing frame (where it fits into the lower part of the frame). The L formed by the lower section is not perfectly square, so the two pieces would not have fit flush.

The areas that have been scraped or filed down are now bare metal and should hold a good solid glue join later.

Next up: Highlighting the ropes with yellow ochre to correct any areas where the brown wash was too heavy, then hightlighting them with Aleene's Medium Yellow. This really brings out the contrast and detail.

I put Brass on the tail hinge and touch up around it with Walnut Brown. Later I will wash this like I did the other brass.

Looking at it, I am really not happy with the mouth of the flamethrower. I thought I could live with the hole that was drilled, but it just looks too....flat. I take my hobby knife to it and widen out the hole into a more cone-shaped depression. Then I paint over that with black, making a circle to simulate a deeper opening. Much better.

I use Ceramcoat's Sweetheart Blush - which is a bright, deep red - to paint the pilot's gloves. I am going to wash over them later with the Admiral Blue to give them a darker, almost blood-red color.

I go over all the rigging hardware with a slightly thinned-down black paint. I don't want it watery, but I don't want it so thick I have to work to get paint into the crevices of the fine detail.