So I am (mostly) new to the whole painting thing. I painted model aircraft as a couple of times about twenty years ago, but I was eight at the time and got plenty of help from my dad, but he wasn't a models guy, so it probably wasn't very good help. Since then, I have been dying to try my hand at it for real, and twenty years later Armada has me all set to take the plunge.

All of the tutorials I have seen on hear have been VERY much appreciated, by the way, but I have a couple more questions for the painters out there.

1. What size brushes are people using? On fighters? On caps?

2. Most people currently painting seem to be using pre-established collections of paints, which is no surprise, and Vallejo or GW seems to be the flavor of choice. My question: Is there anything wrong with starting out on a cheap set like Testors? That's what I used when I was a kid, and I know they probably aren't as good, but are they passable? I don't want to break the bank, I guess, but don't want utter slop.

Thank you again for all the help you have given us rookies so far, and any more answers you can give would be much appreciated!

Testors is an enamel and goes on thick without thinner and takes a long time to dry properly. miniature painters use acrylics because the max dry time between even substantial coats is only 20 minutes. Second Testors also requires thinner or solvent to clean brushes or clean up mistakes.

GW and Vallejo are acrylic and use water for thinning and cleanup, and are high pigment witch means they coat easier. They are also all generally flat without the addition of a gloss coat so they are usually more suitable for miniature painting. 90% of the ship parts are flat. Testors makes flat colours but they are generic basics without many military or navy applications. You would have to use Model Master range for that and once again you are higher priced so not any benefit over acrylics.

GW also makes a great line of washes which are very well suited to the armada ships to bring out detail. Long story short, you go cheap on paint, you get cheap poor results.

Tamiya acrylics are ok for airbrush, but have terrible brush on quality.

Brush sizes should be limited to 3, 2, 1, 0 and a decent medium size drybrush.

Thanks for the quick reply.

Testors actually has lot of acrylic paints, so I was planning on using some of those. Acrylic/enamel differences aside, is Testors still inferior?

Thanks again!

Ya they are not really that great. I switched to GW and Vallejo years ago, and never looked back.

For a total repaint, should it be brushed or airbrushed?

Well one of the best things about the pre-painted stuff is much of your foundation is already there. If you check out my Victory and Nebulon-B posts here in the paint section their base colours were painted right over the original or left intact with simple added highlights, and weathering. Airbrush is not really required these models are small enough to do by hand.

See you got this Wes

For a total repaint wj, if you mean cap ships i may recommend airbrushing. depends on what you want to do. If you are applying an entirely new coat of paint to of tha cap ships however and you're familiar with an airbrush i highly recommend it for at least that layer as youll have a more consistent result with the paint. I have a background in military Diorama painting and Airbrushes are absolutely wonderful and almost necessary in my mind for "Camouflage" but you really don't "need" if for anything.

I'm sure if you gave either myself or Wes a detailed description of what you want to do we could be of some assistance.

I do not recommend using airbrush on the fighters for anything other than a base coat.

Ya I may use an airbrush for base coating or particular effects, but I find my brushwork is usually pretty clean. Also a military painter Lurtz

Total repaint of the ships. I am looking for one color, not on the model, and then to ad small groups of colors onto the ships - those I know I need a brush. But I am wondering if its best for a airbrush for painting an entire ship one color.

Airbrush will work if you need an exact match for your brush on color. Otherwise spray can will do.

Ica has some good advice on brushes here. Good brushes really do make a huge difference in results achieved.

Though I think Ica is also far more talented than I am.

Were I starting, knowing what I now know though. I would recommend:

A good 1 or 0 brush, I also have a preferance for sable over acrylic, the main trick in buy a brush is to wet it and test it. Make sure it forms a nice point. Note: ask for a cup of water from the store staff if they don't have one handy.

For paints I would as the others have said go for the GW or Vellejo ranges. If you are painting the ties you may only need an off-white and black. You can add shading with an ink wash and either a black or light brown would suffice. For X-Wings you may end up with a pale gray, blue, red and black. With the black or light brown ink.

You will also need a disposable cup or an old cup for water and a pallet. I can recommend a see through page protector with a clean sheet of paper to serve as a pallet. Some paper towels (from the kitchen) and some news paper for spills and splashes.

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Advice:

Don't dip your brush in the paint and then paint from the pot. Move the paint onto your pallet and add some water, thin the paint down to "milk like" consistency. It may take some practice to get it right, but the paint should go on nice and even and not be too thin as to see through it or streak. I usually give my brush a quick clean off here to avoid any paint drying in the metal part of the brush.

Run the tip of the brush into the paint on the pallet, spin the brush in your finger tips as you do. Then remove the paint that will form outside the brush tip, do this by painting a line on a piece of paper and rotate the brush to reform the tip. Once you do this the paint will come out of the tip like ink in an old metal/feather tipped pen. Which makes the line even and as thin as you can ever get it.

Keep in mind you have to learn how to do this, you will improve with practice.

When you are painting you'll see all the little shakes of the hand and errors, odds are very few people will ever look at a model as close as you do while you paint it, so don't sweat the little errors.

Keep in mind too that the Tie Fighters and X-Wings are very small. So unlike a perfect scale model paint job you are just going to try and get the impression the person looking at it gets. A dot of red and then a smaller dot of the hull colour will look like Howrunners pentagon unit marking. You'll go blind trying to do anything more.

With the ink wash don't brush it everywhere, dab it on using a poke-poke motion of the brush and if it goes where you don't want it dab it back up with the brush or a bit of paper towel. Control where it goes. Once dry you can paint over the parts where the ink probably shouldn't be.

Keep your brush clean, replace your painting water more often than you would like. I keep a little sqeeze bottle of clean water and spil a little on my pallet rather than use the dirty water.

If you don't have a large supply of paints you may find you have to mix up your own colours. If you do it may be worth making a wet pallet for yourself. Get a small storage box ( This is my choice box.) then put a few layers of kitchen town in the bottom and a sheet of baking paper or wax paper over. Then wet it all with water so that everything is wet, rinse off the excess water and you are done. I have had paint keep for quite some time on this, even to the point where the colours seperate.

Thanks for the tips. This is giving me a lot more courage to move forward!