Friday, December 08, 2006

Lines


linedloco
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.
Brian very kindly lent me a Bob Moore lining pen some time ago. I’ve tried painting think lines on rolling stock in the past with a bow pen but it seems like hard work. The Bob Moore pen looked easier but at 90 quid any experiment would be expensive. Fortunately Brian didn’t get on with his so I had a go.

As you can see the results aren’t half bad. The trick is to accept that the professionals don’t get it perfect first time and fill in corners or erase mistakes with a small brush.

I used the pen with Precision lining yellow and a bit of care. Only the straight lines were pen’d. I did the best I could to keep them straight and in line with the nearest edge on the bodywork. Once they were in I filled the corners with yellow to allow for the curve using my only pure sable brush. Finally the green was used to make the curves and fix my lining wobbles.

Last job was to spray the whole lot with satin varnish. Not to protect anything, just to bring the mat colours alive a bit. The result is too shinny and looks a bit toy-like but I hope that a good heavy weathering will calm everything down.

The lining pen was reasonably easy to use. It comes with only one size of nib but you can buy others. It’s not as flexible as a bow pen because you are very limited to the size of line. I know you can rule an extra line beside the first but that second one will be difficult to keep in line and neat. The secret is to make proper plasticard guides. For the IOM locos this will be on the “to do” list.

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