A white and purple night

Out comes the airbrush for another session. I’m still having some air/paint throughput issues, but eventually the area that needs to get painted, does. I’m disassembling the brush after each paint session until I get to the bottom of these problems.

In any case, white is a difficult color to paint. Sometimes one thins it too much and it refuses to cover; sometimes it is too thick and can barely exit the airbrush. But the main effort this time went into painting the three Hawks wheel wells, landing gear, wheel hubs, and the underside of the CyberHobby Sea Vixen. And the main problem was that, even after thinning, the paint was a very unusual consistency, which resulted in some pebbling on the undersurface of the Sea Vixen. Some buffing and a surface coat will likely be called for.

The next color is one that no one will be able to say they can’t see when it is sprayed. This was the Humbrol 68 Purple for the lower bits of the Global Flyer’s tail bits. I managed to knock off one of the horizontal tail surfaces while masking, and I know that is going to haunt me repeatedly until this model is complete. Which it won’t be until I paint the underside of the central fuselage pod in the same Purple.

Interestingly, after I cleaned the brush from the White, when I mixed up the Humbrol Purple it shot out like a fire hose. I’m beginning to think I had some bad or contaminated paint. Maybe the tin lid didn’t seal properly? In any case I’ll shoot the surface coat with a new tin. My last of Xtracolour White, alas, due to the new Royal Mail restrictions on shipping enamels.