The Little World

I love being cheap. It looks so trendy and cool. And you can set up a camouflage of frugality for 29 days of the month that allows you to go out and spend like a maniac on the 30th…

The cheapest way to paint a model – apart from dipping it in a bucket of watercolour – is to use a brush. We all started out doing this and it may be that we all finish up the same way – after all, you do not trust a kindergarten kid with a spray gun, and you probably don’t want to be around me if I get to my nineties with one either.

There are two sizes of brush available in the hobby shop; too small and too large. Both will do a perfectly adequate job if you are prepared to adjust your notion of adequacy. Or you can shop for more brushes than you need, pay more for them than you can afford, and ruin the best ones with bad behaviour. If you persist in this quest long enough you will eventually arrive at..

The Perfect Brush

It will not look good. The handle will have splotches of paint on it or bits missing. The ferrule will be corroded. The bristles will have a world-weary look to them when dry. But when wet with your favourite paint, They. Can. Do. Anything. You will attempt the impossible and not notice that you have actually done it. It will go for years. You will be welded to it as if it were a bone in your body. And eventually your wife, child, or grandchild will take it away and use it to clean the inside of a budgie cage.

While it is in your control, dip it in your favourite paint and stroke it across your favourite model. If you cannot decide from one week to the next which paint range you favour or which new model to paint it on, get in touch with the hobby shop. They will help you to maintain this attitude of vacillation until they have sold everything on the shelves to you and they can retire to the Gold Coast.

If you can decide, be aware that you will get some brush marks no matter how thin you dilute the paint and how lightly you stroke the model. This is an advantage with wood-effects but not with a model car. Make no mistake – the paint maker’s videos that show someone getting a flawless surface on a model car with a brush are pure porn. They have no basis in reality.

By the same token, the area you are painting may be so small and the paint finish so dull as to render brush marks irrelevant.

Some people wonder if brush painting will save them time – in the smallest details, yes. You could spend an hour and $ 5 masking details for a spray coat that could be done in five minutes for nothing with a brush. It’s just good sense to use this time saver when you can – but know when you can do it safely.

Cleaning brushes? Do it in a dish, stroking the cleaner/thinner through the brush from the ferrule to the tip of the bristles and then dry it carefully afterwards. Store them standing upright in a rack. They’ll last for years.