Extra witchy Calibarn

I wanted to do some airbrush practice

I’ve got a few ideas for customizing model kits that will require me to do things other than just paint individual pieces a solid color. So I decided to do make a kit where I’d include some masking and some gradients in order to just get practice in.

Gundam Calibarn kit painted blue with the bits floating around it

The idea was to make Calibarn extra witch-y, painting the gun/thruster like an actual witch broom, giving it a blue/purple color scheme, and turning the bits into fireballs.

Putties

After my last kit where I did a total color replacement I realized that it makes having gaps between pieces much worse because the leaking color contrasts so much.

So the solution I found was to use putty to fill the gaps, then sand down. I tried out a few different ones to figure out which one I liked most.

Boxes for milliput super fine, tamiya putty and tamiya putty white

I like milliput, having used it before to fill gaps on 3d model prints, but it really didn’t work for this scale where there’s also lots of details I don’t want to cover up. Both tamiya putties worked fine, but I could really use more practice applying them. I used some wooden coffee stirrers to apply it but afterwards found some advice to use silicone spreaders that I’ll try next time.

Also for next time I picked up some vallejo water based putty that should be easier to thin and work with. We’ll see how that goes on a small test.

The results weren’t perfect but definitely an improvement.

Calibarn's backpack painted brown with some obvious gaps between pieces Calibarn's back waist piece with the gaps filled and painted blue

Note the brown backpack having more noticeable gaps (though conveniently no contrasting color shows through). For the pieces I actually puttied I used too little putty and it contracted while drying so there’s still some visible diviots but it’s better.

Unrelated, but I’m pretty happy with the “leather” color I was able to mix for the backpack.

Masking

The first airbrushing technique I wanted to practice was masking on details, so I just added some stars and wiggly stripes as they seemed to fit the theme.

Calibarn's shoulder with a purple star Calibarn's thigh with a purple squiggle line

These came out pretty well, I was able to avoid much overspill and the good masking tape actually gave me a nice border. (There’s a little extra purple, but that’s from missing when adding a gradient elsewhere not from the actual masking step…)

Gradients

For Calibarn itself I pained on a few purple gradients to give it some depth and texture, but nothing especially complicated. The biggest gradient project I gave myself was painting the bits to hopefully look like fireballs its controlling floating around it.

This required a multi-colored gradient going from red to white at the tip to sell the fire effect.

One of Calibarn's bits painted red One of Calibarn's bits painted red with an orange gradient One of Calibarn's bits painted red with an orange and yellow gradient One of Calibarn's bits painted red with an orange, yellow, and white gradient

I really like how these came out. Though I think I should have kept the gradient a bit tighter and left more pure red because as-is they look a bit like candy corn…

I also wanted to give the thrusters some kind of actual effect to imply they’re working, so I painted the tips red. By doing it as a really sharp angle I was able to catch just the tips, so the tips were bright red but I didn’t soak the whole piece.

Calibarn's thrusters with the tips red

Results

Calibarn painted blue riding its broom painted brown with fireball bits floating around it Calibarn painted blue riding its broom painted brown with fireball bits floating around it

After doing some photo editing to remove the fishing line that held up the bits, it turned out great! Though I still need to invest in some kind of photo booth to get better lighting and backgrounds for my shots.

Also, the pre-edit photos:

Calibarn painted blue riding its broom painted brown with fireball bits floating around it held up by fishing line Calibarn painted blue riding its broom painted brown with fireball bits floating around it held up by fishing line
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