Hi, I am new to this hobby and would like to know what is the best way to do a hard edge camouflage on a 1/35 scale tank. I've been reading on forums and couple people are using "Silly putty". I am using an free hand method with an airbrush and the result is not that great. Any advise is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Liquid masking film is the best I have found. Next to that, you could try some 2" wide masking tape.

Silly putty is rather easy to use and cheap

Otherwise you can use Tamiya masking tape

cheers

If you're going to go with tape, you can use ordinary blue painter's tape (the kind you get in any home improvement or big box retailer store) instead of Tamiya tape. It's much easier to find and way cheaper.

Use a piece of glass (like a small rectangle from a cheap picture frame) and a new X-acto knife blade to cut it to shape. Cutting small, narrow pieces allows you to go around curves easier. Pealing or lifting the edges of your masks allows you to create tightly sprayed "soft edges" like are seen on a lot of armor.

The blue painter's tape is also useful for many other purposes around the work bench that you wouldn't want to use the more expensive proprietary Tamiya tape for.

HTH

I agree with Mike. i wrote tamiya masking tape but actually you can use other masking tapes less expensive

For exemple I often use this tape:



from Tesa film company. Is less expensive than tamiya tape and it don't damage the paint job

There MAY be another route...

I recently saw these multi-shaped spray-templates at the HobbyLobby- these are hand-held plastic masks used in artist and commercial air-brushing to get curves, lines, shapes, etc., similar to the old drafting templates. This may be a useful approach for doing hard-edge schemes that include both angular and linear forms and curved forms.

I have not yet tried these out, but it seems like an option...

I have used home-made spray-templates with shapes and curves cut out of sheet styrene (say 0.010 or 0.015 sheet- some but not a lot of rigidity)- hold or position these for masking a pattern piece by piece. To carry the sharp edge into corners and at joins, such as fender-to-hull or deep panel angles where the above rigid template does not cleanly fit and mask, I use either an alum-foil or blue-tape mask wedged in place in the specific area during the spraying.

Bob

Thanks everyone for your reply. I will give the masking tape a try.

I use poster putty and subtractive masking for doing hard edged patterns. Shoot your lightest color, cover the areas to stay that color with stretched out poster putty, shoot the next color, repeat. After the final color remove all the poster putty and you have a beautiful, matched, hard edge camo pattern. You can re-use the poster putty, too.