Painting Tanks Follow Up

Hoagy Writes:

"Nice blog entry there sir. How would this apply to something like my Immolator? It was already stuck together (as you know) and will have the colors of my order on them. Should I really be masking off all the different parts and spraying them their respective colors? I don't have an irbrush right now and there aren't any colors spray-paint wise that are close to my orders colors, so I had to go the hard, hand paint route... any pointers would be appreciated! (and any for my Exorcist too lol!) cheers old bean!"

Glad to see you over here, bud!

First off, I'd say live and learn on the assembly. I like to leave the turrets and side doors off of any Rhino based vehicle as well as the tracks (don't paint them on sprue, however). Gives you more places to grab the model with minimal risk to the paint and allows you to get at a bunch of areas much more easily. It's also super handy for you because of all the Sisters of Battle Iconography that becomes much easier to paint once you don't have to manipulate the whole tank. If you haven't assembled the Exorcist, then give these things a shot. Could be useful.

Now I know that the colors you've chosen are purple and cream, so that does kinda hurt your options on the spray.

I have three suggestions:

• Add black as a color on the tanks - maybe use purple and cream as accent colors. Could be cool. This would give you the added bonus of getting to use some black spray paint, the citadel primer is okay, but a good Tamiya or Model Master flat black would be good too. If you go this route, I wouldn't advise drybrushing as a means of highlighting on black. Plus, the highlights on your dreadnought were pretty awesome. I'd just replicate those.
  


• Try and get as close as possible with a spray paint as you can. Even if you use the exact same color on your tank as your foot-troops, there will be a color difference. It's on of the fun properties of color that the larger the area the color is on, the lighter the color will appear. This particular property of color is why military modelers worry about 'scale color' and will often add white to their colors to make them match the real thing more.
  
  Finding a color of spray paint that's close to your particular purple is pretty easy with this little tool: Color Martch 1.0. You can often use this to get pretty close to whatever it is that you're looking for.


• Lastly, Colin has an airbrush. And he might be getting a double action one soon. I'm sure you could work something our with him. Be careful when masking on top of any paint that's been applied by airbrush, its really thin and prone to pealing. And remember, use multiple coats to get a solid base.
  

Any, I hope something in alla this is helpful.