I am curious to know if anyone here has ever done this. First paint your base coat of say olive drab. Then using your airbrush and an almost black color say burnt umber or black with some of the base color added to it. Sparying all of the areas that you would normally hit with a wash plus hitting all of the bolt heads, hatch handles and other small raised areas. then go over it with the drybrush technique using a lighter version of the base color?

I haven't tried it, but I don't think it would work very well. I think that the small amounts of thinner involved would evaporate to quickly to cause the pigment to gather around the detail. Then you'd just have a dark model. This is however, just an opinion since I have not done it. Someone might be able, with practice, to find a way to get it to work. Try on junk models first, as I just don't think it will work.

Rob

One thing I have tried is to use tamiya smoke and spray it alng panel lines ...it turned out pretty good ...try it you'll like it ....but I still prefer preshading .

Richard

You would be surprised what you could do with a paint mix that is 90% thinner and 10% paint. Using this method you can really control how much paint your putting down and create some subtle weathering effects. David Aungst uses this method when weathering his aircraft. His article is here on ArmoramA here.

Using the airbrush to apply washes and other weathering effects is an awesome way to finish a model. The best description that I know of has been done by James Blackwell.

In his article on Missing Links , he calls it the "Post Shading" method.

The model in the article has been one of my favorites for a long time.

Later,
Tim

I do the opposite.I spray Tamiya Olive Drab then,lighten it(I call it fading the color) and spray the panels.I also do this in steps,working in gradual lighter shades.The effect always produces a nice,worn,sun-beaten look.I still use washes after this but,I have to work less to get a nice contrast.

I might add that doing this wash with the airbrush (or "post-shading") is rather useful when doing a model with camouflage. It's very difficult to pre-shade with a three-tone camo scheme.

Nic