YunYunFan Garage Kit Guide

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YunYunFan's Garage Kit Painting Guide

So you want to start painting garage kits and you have no idea what to do or how hard it'll be, this guide is for you

Tools

I know what you're thinking, garage kit tools are going to cost an arm and a leg but that's not true. Here's the rough cost breakdown in leafbux:

sanding tools (~$60), putty (~$20), pinning (~$20), glues (~$20), airbrush (~$120), compressor (~$80), brushes (~$30), misc (~$50), Paints (~$150), paint booth (~$100), respirator (~$30), safety goggles ($5).

total : ~$700

Sanding tools

Sandpaper 600 and 1200 grit a whole pack of 5 sheets should last you 3-4 kits or more.

Files (round + flat ) get the best ones you can get like Grobet since you'd be using this tool a lot.

Nippers get a decent/cheap one, not that important.

Tweezers get decent pair of tweezers. used very frequently

Optional sanding tools

dremel good to have for those big tabs that you're too lazy to file

sanding sponges a nice alternative to sandpaper, can also be used with the Mr.Polisher PRO (Hobby Tool) if you're too lazy to use files.

Putty

Epoxy Putty - used to fill in gaps and even sculpt new pieces.

Tamiya basic putty - quick and easy to use for filling small holes.

Cyanon (white superglue)- optional hard to find outside of japan, good alternative to basic putty

Light curing putty - optional, expensive, never used it. super fast curing.

Pinning tools

brass rods at least two sizes, a big fat 1.5mm rod and a smaller one at around 0.8mm. Use pliers or your nippers to cut them.

drill bits 0.1 mm larger than whatever rods you use.

drill/ pin vise you can use either or. I just use a handheld cordless drill, just to sure that the chuck can handle small drill bits.

Glues/putty

museum putty good putty to hold pieces in place temporarily, but can be used in the final product.

UHU glue nice glue for holding things in place where superglue can't

Superglue used for just about everything.

Epoxy glue nice alternative to UHU glue, but i prefer UHU glue.

Airbrush

absolutely necessary. it's a lot easier than brushing by hand. Get at least mid range $100 dollar airbrush such as GSI creos or Iwata. And also get the cleaning kit (in order to take apart the airbrush nozzle etc). Some people go crazy with a separate airbrush for enamel and lacquer, and 0.3mm and 0.5 needle for small detail and large coverage. But a 0.3mm airbrush is all you need, if you clean it well.

Compressor get the cheapest one possible, possibly with a tank. you're not going to use more than 30 psi.

Brushes

since you're using an airbrush for most of the big stuff, use brushes for the small stuff. get at least two of size 0 brush, the cheap disposable synthetic ones for general use.

Eye Painting brush.

GodHand get kamifude fine point, medium or long. I prefer long to get easier lines, and short for fine details. God hand have nice handles

For other brands: get kolinsky sable size 4/0, preferrably with a large handle.

G-06br Finish Master Ultra Fine R get at least 2 of them

Miscellaneous

Tamiya Paint Stirrer absolutely necessary

Painting clips get as many as necessary (around 30)

masking tape (10mm + 6mm)

Rodico putty (for masking)

1.5 ml eppendorf tubes

10 ml beakers

spray pot

0.5 ml droppers

Paints:

There are three types of paints: Acrylic water based, Enamels and Lacquer. If you have a painting booth, get lacquers, otherwise use acrylics. Why choose one over the other? lacquers are better since you have more colors to choose from, shinier finish, and doesn't clog. Cost wise they're about the same so why choose the inferior product? but whether you want to choose lacquer or acrylic you need enamels, which i'll explain in the painting section.

Paint brands

Tamiya Acrylic : ok 7/10, not many colors to choose from since they're mostly focused on model kits for tanks

Tamiya Enamels: 9/10. no complaints except no magenta

Mr.Color: 9/10, can pretty much do everything with just this one brand

Gaianotes: 9/10, pretty good, but hard to find, very similar to mr.color in terms of quality

Primers:

Mr. Surfacer 1500 white. emphasis on the white color. Although it's not a "PRIMER", it's pretty much the same thing since it stick to just about everything and leaves the surface somewhat rough. Absolutely necessary and get at least 2-3 bottles.

Thinners: Mr. Levelling Thinner 400. Get at least two bottles, you use this for everything including other brands of lacquer paint.

A can of cheaper lacquer thinner from the big box store for cleaning shit up.

Lighter fuel - Ronsonol or zippo for thinning enamel paints

basic color paints

white mr. color - get at least 5 bottles. 1 bottle is enough for 1 kit. magenta (get 2 bottles, one bottle can lasts many 4-6 kits) yellow (get 2 bottles) cyan (get 2 bottles) black (get 1 bottle) red + brown (optional)

Clear Finishes:

GX100 (get 3 bottles min) GX114 matte (get 3 bottles min)

this is all the paints you need for 99% of all your colors since you'll be mixing them. Why am I telling you to get a lot of bottles? since Mr. Hobby only restocks every 2-3 months and you might not get them.

Skin paints: optional

Tamiya Flesh (avoid)

Lascivus 6/10 (pretty mid, but easy to use, one bottle lasts 2-3 kits.).

Clear skin Paints: just choose 1

gaianotes 059 + 060 (hard to get but not impossible, i got mine off robotkai, 2 bottles of each would easily last you 10-15 kits or more)

gaianotes clear 50ml bottle (used to dilute the clear paints, alternatively use gx100).

gaianotes 041 + 042 (easy to get, but harder to mix right vs 059/060)

modo m-214, m-211, m-212 (easy to get off ebay, never tried it though)

model kasten c-12 (impossible to get outside of japan, forget it).

Metallic paints:

dull metallic - mr.hobby or gaianotes (get some enamel versions too)

mirror metallic - alclad black base + chrome

Enamel Paints:

Orange - 2 bottles

white - get 3-4 bottles, (roughly 0.5 botttle/kit)

blue- 1 bottle

red - 1 bottle

yellow - 1 bottle

black - 1 bottle

brown - 1 bottle

clear red - 1 bottle

magenta -get humbrol/testors, more than 1 bottle since it's hard to get

Safety Gear

at a bare minimum you'd need:

a respirator, p100 for acrylics and/or sanding. For lacquers get NIOSH-Approved OV/P95

safety goggles

Painting booth vented outdoors

disposable gloves(optional but cheap and nice to have)

Sanding

I won't cover sanding/pinning/puttying much because it's all over the internet and everyone does it differently. But use a p100 respirator.

Before you even sand, the first thing you do is you have to count all your pieces and make sure it's all there.

Once you confirm all the pieces are there, you have to see how each piece is going to fit with one another. This step is really important since you have to cut off tabs. I've cut off tabs that were actually not tabs. If you do it's not the end of the world, but would be a pain to fix with putty.

To cut off a tab, start with the nipper and cut off 80% of it. If it looks too fragile, don't even start with the nipper, start with the file.

with the file, start with a lot of pressure and ease off on the pressure once you get to 99% of it. Once there isn't any obvious ridge, use the 600 grit sandpaper to get rid of any scratches from the file. The less pressure you put on the file, the less deep scratches you have to take off.

That's pretty much it. do the same for mold lines and ridges

Pinning

Once all your pieces are sanded, it's time to pin. Use a scrap block of wood as a temporary base. First, drill a hole in the male part, and put a temporary pin that is just slightly higher than the hole that you drilled. Then, either using the rodico masking putty or liquid masking, you can mark the hole in the opposite female piece and drill. If the hole isn't precise or just slightly off, you can enlarge the hole by drilling sideways, this is easy to do with a handheld cordless drill.

once you finish pinning, put your model together, with museum putty if necessary.

Puttying

For small holes you can use either the epoxy putty or basic putty. Basic putty is a lot easier to use since you don't have to knead it.

For large gaps, or holes that you fucked up drilling, use epoxy putty. Mix the two piece putty with gloves. Once it's mixed put it where you need to in excess amount. Use water if it gets too sticky. You can save a lot of work by molding the putty before it hardens.

To mold the putty, apply lots of water to the other piece and the putty after you put it on one piece, and the fit them together and take it apart slowly. the water should prevent it from sticking with the other piece. Reshape the pulled pieces and trim off the excess.

Cleaning

Next you need to get the release agent off your pieces, they usually use something like vaseline. So get a bucket filled with water and dishsoap. and swirl your piece in it and leave it in for at last 5-6 hours. Then rinse it in a bucket of clean water.

Painting

Before painting you need to plan it. Always paint from light colors to dark colors, and base paints before details. The general idea is like this: primer --> paint base colors --> paint details --> clear coat

Thinning paints

for airbrush (paint: thinner)

1:1 ratio up to 1:2 ratio. Generally I use 1:1 ratio for everything. This is where the 1.5 ml Eppendorf tubes are handy. It has volume markings on the side, allowing you to use even less paints.

can you go higher? yes up to 1:5. But using paints too thin needs more patience when layering or else you'd cause paint to drip.

for brush painting 1:0 up to 1: 2 ratio.

Airbrushing

I'm assuming by now you have a dual action gravity fed 0.3mm airbrush. so how do you use it?

first hook it up to the compressor. Then set the dial on the compressor to the pressure that you want plus 3 to 4 psi higher. press the button on your airbrush and see what the pressure drops to. It should be: 30 psi for primers/clear coats and 20 psi for general painting.

if you are new to airbrushing, practice with water in the cup. press the trigger down first before pulling back.

then put on your respirator, goggles and gloves. check for respirator fit by doing negative and positive pressure test. if you smell your paint, you're doing something wrong.

Next practice on disposable plastic spoons to get a good sense of how far you have to be from the object. and the technique. mix up the 1 ml of paint in the Eppendorf tube, and then put it in the paint cup.

Spray 3 to 7 cm away from the object in short 1 second bursts. For larger objects, you can spray further away with 10 to 15 second bursts. You'll eventually get a feel for how far you should be away from the object after a while.

it's important to keep the airbrush moving slowly or else paint will accumulate too much in one spot and drip. keep checking for an even coat and fill in the missing spots.

Getting base coats should take you less than 1 day to get decent at it. The biggest mistake you can make is getting too much paint on it and it starts dripping or not letting it dry before a second coat, where you'd get popcorning. you should let it dry for at least 5 min before a second coat for lacquers and 2 to 4 hours for acrylic.

Primer

Once you're confident, it's time to prime your pieces. use the airbrushing technique I mentioned above. Always use WHITE primer. why? because primer color bleeds through the final paint. so if you use grey, your pieces would look dead and grey. it's not so important for darker colors but for any light colors, it'll show. so why do you see so many grey pieces? because it's easy to see where you fucked up sanding, but I wouldn't use it for the final product and strip it. A bottle of surfacer 1500 lasts 5-6 kits anyways so it's not that expensive. Don't go crazy on having a thick coat of primer, unless you want to hide the green epoxy putty or whatever marks you left behind.

Base coats and Masking

Since lacquer paint mixes with the layer below, if your piece have 2 colors, do not do 1 big coat of 1 color and base coat of next color. Always mask. How do you mask? start with the edges with your thinnest tape. Use tweezers to put the tape in place. if you need something smaller use scissors to cut the tape or a cutting guide. then layer bigger tape to the center of whatever you need to mask. If you need to mask off larger pieces and don't want to waste tape. Use plastic wrap after the 2nd layer of tape.

for odd shaped pieces of masking you have two options: putty or liquid mask. I've never had luck with liquid masks. but with putty it's pretty easy to put on and adjust with tweezers.

you can pretty much remove the tape right away, use tweezers though.

Highlights and Gradients

now for more advanced techniques. how to highlight stuff, make your stuff less monotone. The solution is pretty simple. make clear paint. Mix 0.5 ml of gx 100 with a small drop of paint (less than 0.1 ml) darker or different color paint depending on your model. then go into the recessed area of your model and start spraying.

If the crevices of the model is hard to reach, then spray lighter colors on the exposed sections of your model instead. it's literally that easy. But this effect is easy to overdo, so don't go too heavy on highlighting.

Painting details

ok so now that you have the base coats, it's time to paint details. But anon, you said to mask everything and not paint on top of stuff. well yes, for lacquers. which is why we paint details with enamels. enamels doesn't mix with lacquer or acrylic. so you can even do white on top of black.

First make sure your surface is glossy. never buy matt/flat paint for this reason. If it's not glossy, spray some gx100 or any clear lacquer on top.

the general rule is, if whatever detail is larger than the brush you use, just spray it. Mask whatever you need to and spray your ENAMEL paint.

if you need to paint something small use the brush. rip off the cap of a 1.5 ml eppendorf tube and use it as a paint tray. get a 10 ml beaker and pour some lighter fuel in it. add a little bit of paint to the paint tray and a little bit of lighter fuel. Use less than a 1:1 paint to thinner ratio or less

next, I'm pretty sure you fucked up at this point and get paint on where you don't want it to be. I know I did many times. but don't fret. it's time to bring out the G6br clean stick. Dip the clean stick in the beaker of lighter fuel. and wipe off the parts where you fucked up. Dab the excess lighter fuel out and just like magic, the fucked up paint is gone.

Painting Skin

Painting skin with lascivus cl01 is pretty easy , it's literally the same technique as described above. and the red highlight cl03 is already pre-thinned and mixed with clear paint.

clear skin now for the clear skin method, this is the advanced technique, but not really, it's pretty much the same as the other techniques you've learned.

First, mix up 50:50 ratio of 059:060 gaianotes in a 1.5 ml eppendorf tube and set aside. It should look like blood.

Then get a 1.5 ml eppendorf tube, fill it with 0.5 ml of clear, 0.5 ml of thinner, and 1 small scoop (of tamiya paint stirrer, roughly 0.05 to 0.1 ml) of the 50:50 mix. the paint should look like light tomato jelly at this point or the cl03 of the lascivus series.

Finally, spray the skin on the model. It should take you 4 coats or so to get light color skin. Make sure to dry between coats of at least 10 min.

Now that your model looks like a pale vampire, it's time to add the highlights. Since there's a ton of work you did to get to this point, you can use enamels for highlighting. Use clear red enamel, or fluorescent red of another brand. If you don't have clear, mix it up yourself. If you screw up, just wipe it off with lighter fuel and try again.

you can adjust the ratio of 059:060 depending on your preference. more pink is generally preferred like my abbigail williams is 60% pink. If you have a tan colored model, go heavy on the orange.

Stripping paint

by now you should be able to paint 99% of the model minus the eye (which we usually leave for last or decals. Although sometimes I paint the skin last).

But what if you super fucked up a piece and need to repaint it. wat do? use gloves at this point and bring out a ton of paper towels and isopropyl alcohol. start wiping it off. For crevices we use our secret tool: a toothbrush. if the paint is super stubborn. use lacquer thinner. make sure to use eye protection

Eye Painting

now eye painting seems hard at first, but it's easy. Don't be intimidated by those videos that did the eye in 10 min, it's unrealistic for unskilled people like us. But with enough practice, you can do it in 4 hours or so. First you either have to clear coat with a ton of gx100 until shiny if you're doing clear skin method. or you can paint the skin first and mask the white eye part out with putty. It's up to you. the difference is that the eyelash color will be slightly more tan instead of dark black if you use the clear skin method. NOTE you cannot do this with lascivus.

outline

first have a reference image and a plan. You can use a free photo software to paint an eye. As you can see, my drawing skills is non existent. Even I can tell it looks like shit.

Next we have to do the outline. Use enamel orange. why orange and not black? because I tried outlining with black, and it's a giant pain to erase your mistakes. With orange, it's easy to erase stuff.

put a small drop of orange enamel on a ripped up cap of the 1.5 ml tube. and pour at least two different beakers of lighter fuel, one for the cleaning up the other for cleaning your brush.

Don't dilute the orange, but dip your brush in the ligther fuel if it gets too gunked up or you want a thinner paint.

Next draw the eye lash. it should be on the top of the fold of the eye socket. It's ok if it looks sloppy. use the g06br to make the eye lash look neat. wipe off any big slops and for smaller ones you can push it in.

then look at your reference photo. see how many different extra stuff you have to add to the eyelash. start your paint brush from the eye lash and go outwards. and use the clean stick to make it sharp.

this step should take you 1 hour per eye minimum. if it takes you 10 min then fuck you, why are you reading this.

then move on to the eye ball. again, try to match the reference picture, and don't worry about wiping off your mistakes. Do the major separations of the eye, but not the details. when you do the other eye, make sure to check for symmetry and/or reference picture.

for the eyelid fold, do the same process, slobber a big line on top, but careful on the bottom side. since you can easily wipe off the top but not bottom.

And finally do the eyebrow, which should be very easy at this point.

painting other stuff now that you get the outline done, it's time to celebrate, the hard part is over. check your face for any unwiped paint. Use the sunlight or very strong light. then spray gx100 on top of the outline and let dry for at least 10 min if you spray thin or up to 4 hours if you spray thick.

Next use the brush to add black/brown to the eye lash/brow. it should take you a lot faster this time since you have the outline. then check for unintended paint on other parts of the model, and then spray gx100.

for big sections of the eye, spray the enamel. it's easier to get an even coat that way. make sure to let the gx100 dry at least 4 hours. mask loosely where the paint would go with tape and spray. you can also do this to spray the eye brow if there's a gradient in color. Wipe the excess with the clean stick.

AND repeat this process until the eye is done. GX100--> enamel --> check stray paint--> GX100.

Do this same process for the mouth and eyebrow, if you didn't paint the skin on yet, you should do this step after the skin.

Now that your eye is done. mask the eye with putty or liquid masking. use tweezers to adjust the putty. or a brush with water to get liquid masking off where you don't want it to go.

Paint the skin and blush with the airbrush or if you already have the skin on, then spray everything with gx 114 and you're done.

if you find that you fucked up something, you can spray with gx100 again, and recolor the mouth for example.

Color mixing

you can mix all colors that you want from 3 primary colors: cyan magenta and yellow. plus any white and black. You can also do it from blue red yellow, but you can't get good purple from it. this saves you a ton of money.

So how do you know which color to mix? easy. use GIMP phot editing software. it's free. use the eye dropper tool and then double click on the color, and the CYMK tab. it shows you the ratio of each color you need to mix to get your desired color + white. In general, mix up the cyan, yellow and magenta and add tons of white.

be very careful on adding any black, a little goes a long way.

Mix at least twice the amount you need and save in the 1.5ml eppendorf tubes.

In general here's how it goes:

Blue - pretty much cyan, they use the same pigment for blue anyways.

Purple - 2:1 magenta + blue

Red - 1:1 magenta + yellow

Orange - red + yellow

Brown - red + black

Green - yellow + blue/cyan

buy paints you use a lot of like red and brown if you're lazy.