Modelling is all about the art of deception. Our main aim is to deceive the brain into thinking something small and plastic could be large and metal. We strive to make resin look like skin or pigments look like mud. And, there’s no harder deception to pull off than making plastic look like unpainted metal. I suspect that like me you’ve marvelled and wondered about all the products and techniques, most of which seem to get close but are delicate or prone to respond badly to anything less than perfect application. Getting a good natural metal finish is up there with painting faces convincingly when it comes to tough modelling challenges.
Having got this far with the Mirage, the last thing I want to do is mess it up with a faulty paint job. So before aiming the airbrush at the kit, I aimed it at some plastic sheet. I wanted to test some paint options and see which works best. I tested a couple of AK’s Extreme Metal range against my default option which is Vallejo’s Metal Colour. I tried all three colours over the primer I used, and also over the bare plastic sheet. The point of doing that was to test the colours against each other and also to see what impact the primer has. I also tested a varnish over some sections of paint to see what difference it made. It occurred to me afterwards to try a coat of gloss black over the primer, but as I thought of it late, the results will be late too.
The card was prepared like this with a strip of primer airbrushed on.
The colours were then sprayed across sections sections of primer and sheet to make a sort of checkerboard. I labelled each paint to make sure I didn't forget what was what. Once the paint was dry I masked off a section of each and then sprayed Vallejo’s special varnish for metalic paints. I also did a little test of some thinned Tamiya X1 black to see if it would make a good past saving effect. One the masking tape we off here’s how it all turned out:
The first thing you might see is that theres a definite metallic sheen to all the paints (except of course the gloss black at the far end). You can also see that the amount of light reflected varies, as does the definition of the reflection. The varnished section is most clear on AK’s Aluminium. Its the more dull section on the right. You can also see how important primer is. I taped over a section of AK Aluminium before I used any varnish, and most of the paint came off with the masking tape in the areas I hadn't primed. The Vallejo Duraluminium wasn't properly dry - I did it a few hours after the AK - and so hasn't been varnished yet.
This experiment taught me three things. First of all, priming is important. Secondly, the Vallejo varnish used over AK paints does dull the finish and it seems to either add or enhance any tiny patina that might be in the paint you lay down. You can see the impact of the varnish more clearly in the close up shots. Thirdly, each metalizer paint seems to have its own properties. For example, AK’s White Aluminium was much more robust when handled and masked, than their Aluminium. I’ve got some more work to do before I settle on a base paint for the Mirage, so watch this space for more news.
In the meantime my advice is test metalizers before you use them. It seems like each has its own little personality.
Happy modelling guys.
S
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