Painting the base: all of the paints are Vallejo
The whole base was airbrushed with my trusty Aztek, with a matt black enamel coat, front and back, this was to be left to dry overnight, but with the heat this summer, it was dry within a couple of hours. I thinned down V113 and gave the whole wall a thin coat, leaving some of the black undercoat, showing through, especially underneath the window and behind the shutter, and also underneath, the facia sign. This was sprayed outside; the ambient air temperature was still quite warm, so it dried fairly quickly. I mixed up the colour, which was the door (V135), sprayed in the down ward movement, leaving the undersides of the panels with the matt black still showing through.
I also painted the café sign – mixing up the colours by using V53 and V80, this gave the sign a CO-OP store colour, which I didn’t like so I added a smidge of black to the mix, toning it down a little. So with the masking tape still in place I re-sprayed the sign, I used normal masking tape to mask off the parts on this build, that I didn’t want stray paint on. The best way I’ve found to stop the masking tape from taking off the paint underneath, is to touch it several times on a cotton cloth that hasn’t got a lot of hairs on it. This makes it a low tack tape just sticky enough to adhere to the surface but not to remove the paint. I removed the tape from the base, and added a single strip across the bottom making sure that it was level. Next up was to spray the bottom of the wall; V93 with a little black to tone it down a bit, leaving it to dry.
