Painting Advice

[Athion]

Ok, I have painted a few bodies in my day with rattle cans, mostly simple stuff, about the most exotic would be a 2 color fade with a thick stripe fading the reverse (black fading to gold on the body with gold fading to black on the stipe). Nothing to write home about, but they looked nice.

Anyway, I came into a bit of money and decided to go a step further, bought myself a nice airbrush (Iwata Eclipse) and a really nice Craftsman Air compressor with filter (figuring my Mom is an artist and can use the Airbrush if I REALLY suck at it and you can ALWAYS use a good compressor).

I'v done some practice stuff (My wife may kill me soon if I dont stop painting on every clear piece of plastic I find :) ) and have been reasonably pleased with the results and have decided on doing some lightning bolts for my actual car design...

Now my first practice runs (on the packaging for my cell phone headset ;) ) looked ok... but werent quite "there" if you know what I mean...

I looked around and found a couple of articles on doing lightning, and a couple of pictures... but was wondering if you guys had more to add. Either pics or advice on the actual coloring in of the bolt (the actual drawing of the white bolt was easy and I liked it, it was the shading I didnt care for).

I know this rambling post would make more sense with pics... but I dont have any way to post em at the moment.

Basically what do you guys recommend for "backlighting" the bolts?

Oh, and I also wanted to add that there are some gifted folks on these forums! Any help is appreciated!

[Piggy89373]

Athion, try this site first: http://www.rctech.net/articles/painting_hauntedmyst.shtml

Welcome to the boards!!

Lightning is fairly simple to do and easy to screw up. :D After you paint your bolts on using a paint brush using a good white, try doing the background color first. Fill in the general areas around the bolts and then go back and detail in the bolt's backlighting. Purples, blues and pinks look pretty decent as backlighting colors. Hope this makes sense.

[Athion]

Actually that makes a TON of sense and I think will really help.

I knew there was something I was missing :)

Thanks!! I'll post some results when I can.

Oh, and thanks for the welcome, I must say, these boards are FAR and away the kindest ones I have seen. Most of the boards start out with pleasant attitudes, but within a very short time they degenerate to people hacking on each other. Very refreshing difference here!

[kitty]

That happens on here occasionally but thankfully, if the other members don't quash the offender(s), the moderators/admins on the board are pretty quick to take care of things.

Welcome to the board/forum! I'm looking forward to seeing how your work turns out. If you buy soda in 2L or 3L bottles, those work great for practice when cut in half vertically. As I learned from Piggy, a package of transparencies will do the trick.

[Athion]

LOL My wife brought home 2 packages of transparancies today... great minds, eh?

Anyway here's what I have so far... the one on the right is my first attempt, the one on the left is my second, (painted on random packaging) after taking Piggy's advice on the background. I still have a LONG way to go, but i was MUCH happier with the second one... Looks like mom doesnt get the airbrush just yet :)

I think I really need more practice with the airbrush before I actually tackle a real body though :)

http://www.skorptech.com/athion/images/2tri.jpg

[jimbow]

looks pretty good to me.... ;)

[Piggy89373]

Athion, you're spraying a bit too much paint. The areas around the bolts need to be very lightly colored so the black will slightly darken and dull the blue. Don't spray so heavy, and allow for a slight transparency through the backlighting color. The second one looks pretty good, but I think going with the above advice, you might get the effect you're looking for.

[Athion]

Ok, so what I should be doing then, is do the bolts... then do the background (I'm using black now, but for the truck will probably go with a VERY dark purple/black fade) then spray the backing for the bolts... and just mist that? Then spray the black over the full thing agian?

Also, would I need to back the black with anything?

Many thanks Piggy, having a brain to pick makes this much easier :)

And thanks for the kind words Jimbow!! :)

[Piggy89373]

Sounds about right. You'll have to play with the amount of backlight paint to get the effect you're after. Misting should work fairly well, but you may need to go a bit more close to the bolt to fade the backlighting. It's a trial and error effort to see what effect you're after. Once you back the backlighting in black, you should be good to go. I rarely, if ever, back black, but if feel the need to, use silver.