slugnasty

There was one more thing I wanted to ask, in regards to the "order of operations" so to speak in building and painting. I never know when I should build, when I should paint, in what order. The instructions on any model kit only tell me so much. Sometimes it's as simple as "Should I paint each piece of the engine before assembling?" Right now the question is a bit more complex, because on the dual hood ornaments on the 57 Chevy kit I'm working with, I'm wondering if I should BMF them before I assemble them, or if I should assemble them unpainted and then apply the BMF. I understand there is no one true way of doing this and in the end it's personal preference, but I'd like to hear some wisdom on the subject because obviously there can be advantages and disadvantages in the way and order in which we assemble and paint our kits.

Michelle, Matt, thanks very much for the kind welcomes, advice, and links. Right now I'm working with mostly brushes and Model Master enamel paints. I did get my hands on some Tamiya rattlecans. I tested them on some scrap plastic and they look good; think I'll use that for the body work. I also got some Bare Metal Foil for trim work. I'm wondering just how far you can take this BMF stuff though. I might experiment with it on larger surfaces and see what I get. Also, I dug into some of my old things and found I do own an airbrush, albeit a pretty cheapy one. I might give it a shot if I can track down some compressed air for it (I don't have a compressor.) I will eventually post a thread on the other forum with my project, though I'm sure it won't measure up to the kind of talent on this site being my first go at a model in over 10 years. Again thanks!

I'm new to the forums, and mostly new to model painting. First a little background: I did models as a kid. Back then it was child's play. There wasn't a lot of thought; I bought Testors brand paint bottles with enamel colors and cheap brushes, plain ol plastic cement in the toothpaste tube, whatever the drug store I bought my models at had. It wasn't until I was a teenager and visited a big hobby shop that I realized the depth of the hobby. I certainly had never seen a model car magazine at that point. Now that I'm an adult I've decided to get back into the hobby, and despite the fact that I know people have been doing very professional work with model cars basically since the beginning of model cars, it still seems to me very much that the game has changed enormously in only the 10 years or so since I was a teenager. On second thought, I imagine in a lot of ways it has, but at any rate I need a serious crash course on what the "pros" are doing these days when it comes to making white injected molded plastic pieces into works of art. With that out of the way, I'm working on my first model kit since the old days, and I have a lot of questions. At the shop I went to, I was surprised at how much the airbrush seems to have taken over. Are brushes for whole coats obsolete now, and if so how long have they been? Are globby enamel paints too up in heaven with the dodo? It seems to me this method of brushing on enamel primer and brushing on a couple coats of enamel color over that results in something extremely less quality than what I've seen on these forums. Are people out there still using this tried and true method and getting great results, or do I just have a really unsteady hand? Though my questions come to me like trains of thought, I think I will leave it here and see if this discussion goes anywhere. Thanks very much for your time and patience in dealing with a long-winded model car newbie.

Man, you have some real talent. I myself am also working on my first build, or at least my first build since I was a kid. I have not come as far in the process as you have as I've only been working on it very slowly for 2 or 3 days, but your painting alone already looks way cleaner than anything I've come up with thus far. So comparing my first build to yours, I think it's clear you have some real natural, born-in talent for this kind of thing. Do you have any kind of background in art? Really can't wait to see how this goes. Keep up the good work.

First post from yours truly but I won't bore with introductions. Just wanted to say this thread is what made me decide to post. This project is really inspiring to me being that I'm getting back into scale models after giving them up when I was a teenager. The attention to detail you've put into this car is amazing. Thanks for posting, can't wait to see your next update. I think this Dart will be my next project (currently working on a '57 Chevy, at risk of being cliche. )