A-Wing (1/144)

Starbase101
I see this on a lot of model builds (usually aircraft) and have always not understood why (except the obvious - dark panel lines) so now I'm just going to ask the questions out loud for learning....why do people airbrush panel lines first instead of implementing later as a liquid wash, and then how are you able to apply the top colors without them getting into the panel lines? I'm not being critical, I'm just wanting to understand why since there seems to be many people doing it this way. 🙂

Torsten
I can't answer your question, but I like it and hope you get some good answers, because I have the same problem with understanding.

BTW, the A-Wing is so cute😉

Ben M
You shoot the top coat very thin, and so it makes not only the panel lines show up, but gives some tonal variation to the top coat which makes it look more realistic. You can still do panel line wash after - this affects more than just the panel line, it varies the light/dark of the top coat. Some people do a random "marbled" effect and don't follow panel lines. I've tried it on one model and it kind of came out, but I had to do some re-spraying to get a good finish, and so the effect is very very subtle. Other people with more practice have better outcomes.

Roman Modelar
Pre-shading (dark color around the panel lines) will help to disrupt the top color. I will continue with thinned white color in the way that the black areas will be slightly visible so there will be some variation in the shades. It has nothing to do with highlighting the panel lines (wash), that's another step/technique. I will do the wash after all the painting and top coat.

Starbase101
Is there some common jargon for this shading technique that I could use as a keyword to look on Google or YouTube for (hopefully in-depth) discussion on this painting style? I am interested to know more about it.

Ben M
I've seen variations called "preshading" and "black basing" (not exactly the same thing, but two similar techniques)

Roman Modelar
thanks Ben for better description 😉

Starbase101
Thanks - I've always be curious about why people do this pre-shading and just could not figure out how in the world the top coat is getting applied without covering up the lines. (I haven't yet been able to overcome "airbrush intimidation" and someday will have to motivate myself to learn how to use one of those haunted magical tools.)