After more than a month of indecision, I finally settled on a theme for my first attempt at an airbrushed r/c car body. It turned out very well for a "first" however I took some time to practice before hand which rewarded me well. Here is the end result:







The checkers are actually a nice deep and shiny color, but my workbench's white surface is being reflected making it look lighter than it is. I painting the body with Pactra lacquer-base colors, and House of Kolor RU311 reducer. The colors used are: metallic blue, metallic red, spring white, outlaw black, indy silver, fluorescent yellow and racing red. The orange is a mix of the fluorescent yellow and racing red, while the dark silver in the checkers is a mix of indy silver and outlaw black. The RU311 reducer from HoK is a dream come true... the paint dries incredibly fast. It's a night-and-difference from the Pactra thinner, and cheaper too!

Here is a photo of the body midway through the job:



Below is my very first practice piece. It was a sheet of scrap 1/8" polycarbonate I had laying around. I wanted to see if I could shade my paint drips decently, and get a feel for painting from the "inside." I learned about the importance of not laying on too wet of a backing color or it will bleed through. The blue background should be an even blue color, but the Indy Silver was laid on too thick and bled through the Candy Blue.



Now comes my second, more ambitious attempt. This was shot on a 8x12" sheet of glass I bought. I did this planning to reuse the glass after practice sessions... but the glass is so cheap I just threw it away :) This design was my very first plan for the body, however I did not like how it looked or the color selection. I got some good practice shading, and it showed me how imperative shooting your lighter colors last becomes. Here's photos showing the progression:



Lastly here are some of my doodles that helped me select a theme to try...



Now my Hot Bodies Lightning buggy no longer has to run the tattered original body. The next body for paint will be a Baja Bug for my Stampede...

-Farrell

I just finished painting another canopy for my 450's. I planned for so much more than what resulted, but after having problems with paint peeling up, I finished it up with minimal masking and had to leave it fairly simple looking. I think one of my primer coats was laid on too thick ... too late to do anything about it now :(

Anyway, I took pictures as I progressed, so here they are:















This is what I did:

- Mask off the jagged edges of the checked flat
- Mask off the checkers
- Lay on some Indy Silver / Outlaw Black blend
- Peel off the checkers, and shoot a drop shadow around the edges of the flag
- I used some Hobbico Liquid Mask and masked off my jagged flag. Goes on as opaque, dries translucent.
- Removed the vinyl masking. Now I see some of the white paint peeling up.
- Shoot the Fluorescent Yellow to Fluorescent Orange fade
- Shoot a simple black windscreen, and some Fluorescent Red (turned out looking orange, because I did not want to mask it off and lay down some white for a background.)
- It's done. All that is left is a quick clear coat. This canopy turn out like crap, so I'm just going to use some of the aerosol clear coat junk.

-Farrell

I painted this several months ago, but just now realized I never posted photos. This is the first large canopy I ever painted, its an Align 600E canopy, for my TT Raptor 50 V2. It's also the first time I used my Roland SX-8 8" vinyl cutter to make some masks. I got a good deal on the cutter on eBay, and it came with a bunch of vinyl -- hence the flaming pink vinyl...

I did not realize how well regular vinyl would stick, so I managed to pull off some layers of paint when trying to remove my masks, and adhesive residue was left behind in many spots. After trying desperately to remove the residue, with everything from Goo Gone, to denatured alcohol, to Simple Green... I finally gave up and just shot my clear coat over it all before too much dust could stick to the residue. This made my canopy look like crap up close, but I can live with it for now. I'll just crash it all to soon anyway :)







-Farrell