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Since I couldn’t find any paint available commercially that would come close to my vision of the blue-white I needed for the color coat, I decided to mix my own, using the familiar small bottles of Testors enamel, mostly gloss white, with just a touch of dark blue. Once I had the color I wanted I thinned it down to a milky consistency for use in my airbrush.

I also wanted to make sure I’d have enough for the multiple coats I anticipated applying, so I wound up using four small bottles of white, thinned with three small bottles of thinner. I added the blue by dipping just the tip of an old paint brush handle in the blue and stirring it in until I got the shade I wanted. Because this was the first time I had used thinned enamel like this in my airbrush, it took a bit of experimentation to get it right.

The first decision I made was to use a primer coat, because I wasn’t sure how well the thinned enamel would adhere to the plastic. This was one of those “between a rock and a hard place” kind of decisions. Although I needed to be sure the paint would adhere properly and evenly, I also knew that I would eventually be building up quite a few layers of paint and was apprehensive about covering up details.

I had only been using an airbrush for a couple of years, so I was still a bit of a novice when it came to painting with it. I had a few rattle cans of primer in stock, and since I wanted to use them up, I used them for the primer coat. This was probably a bit of a mistake, because even though I did my best to make it a light coat, it still went on thicker than it would have with the airbrush. I could have stripped the primer off and started over, but decided I’d take a chance and see how it went.