Review of Tamiya Spray-Work Painting Stand

With Christmas a few weeks ago, I got a Hobby Lobby Gift Card and with that, I purchased a really neat item which will go a long way towards helping with many of my art and craft projects.

The work stand was $24.99 MSRP, but with one of the 40% off coupons, I got mine for about $15.  I've seen others go for around $20 at hobby stores, and Amazon currently has it for around $21.

Amazon Link - Tamiya Spray Work Painting Stand

Overview of the Tamiya Spray-Work Painting Stand

The kit comes with 2 different stands in it, one with spring clips, and another which has a platform and a bunch of varying hole sizes.  The kit also comes with 4 clips.

Each stand has an internal lazy susan which allows you to rotate the stand around.  The stand with the spring clips will have to be modified when you first unbox it, but I show how to do that in the video below.  This stand is used for holding larger models, something like a car body you want to airbrush.

The stand with all of the holes is useful for inserting sprues, painting multiple items at once, using the clips to hold items, or to just rotate if you are looking to take pictures of an object from various views.  I plan to also use these stands to take pictures of items when completed.

I have used this multiple times now in the week I have had it, and for around $20 or less, I'm sort of disappointed I had never purchased one of these years ago.

Video Review of Tamiya Spray-Work Painting Stand

I did a video review of the product on YouTube, See the unboxing video below. 

In this video, I show how to adjust the spring clips, as well as show some examples of how to use each of the stands.

This Tamiya product is well worth the $20 or so dollars you will spend, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's tired of painting your fingers, or having to rotate objects in your hand to paint them.  It really is a very handy set to have.

- Rob

Review of Sakura Koi Field Sketch Box

Right now, my go to Watercolor painting kit is the Field Sketch Box from Sakura.  The colors are really vibrant, and the detachable palette and portable nature make it really easy to paint anywhere.  Because of the portability and easy of use, it is much handier to get out, than my tube paints.

Below you can see a picture of my Koi 24 Color kit, along with one of my watercolor paintings.

Amazon Link
Sakura Koi Products on Amazon
These kits come in a variety of sizes, from 12, 18, 24, 30, 36 & 48 pans.

Some of the features of my particular kit (24 Pan) include:

• 24 Half Pan watercolor paints
• A refillable watercolor brush
• 2 dabbing sponges
• A detachable, pegged palette
• Small size, easy portability, 6.25" x 4.5" x 1.125"
• A base pull-down ring for holding

My Ratings of the Set:
Value: 5 (assuming $20 purchase price)
Vibrancy: 5
Quality of Pans: 4
Quality of Accessories: 4.5
Portability / Ease of Use: 5
Overall Rating: 4.5

As for the Cost, the set retails for around $40, but you can pick one up at your local craft store typically for around $25, or on Amazon for about $21.  This is a great value for the $20-25 range, average value if you are paying $40.

As for the overall quality of the set, the majority of the pans have held up well, however 1 or two of them have quite a bit of cracking, especially my Prussian Blue.  It hasn't affected the vibrancy of the colors, or anything else, but for that reason alone it's why I rated the Quality of Pans below at a 4, not a 5.

One thing I did when I purchased the set was to create a palette of the colors, which really helps when choosing what colors to select.  Here is a picture of the palette I created.  I suggest doing this when you get a new kit like this to not only see what the colors actually produce, but to get a sense of how well the paint works from the pans to the paper.

For any other details on the set, visit Sakura's website, which I have listed below.
Sakura Website

Prairie Shack - Tracing, Ink & Paint

I found this image of a shack and thought it looked like something interesting to paint.  I started by modifying the image in Gimp to create a black & white outline of the image that I can trace.

Here is the image prior to tracing.

I have now traced the image and inked it out.

Now the fun part, when I paint the image.  Here is the finished product below.  I really like how it turned out in the end.  I call it, Prairie Shack.

The last thing I did was took the image and converted it to a black and white image, as I think it gives it a unique look.

Below are the supplies I used, along with the printout, and the finished painting.  I have a Sakura Koi 24 pot watercolor kit that has become my go to supplies recently.  I used a #8 Round brush for most of the details.  I highly recommend the Sakura Koi kit, and I'll post a link to the kit here below.  It provides deep vibrant colors, and in another post, I'll do a full review on the kit, show some of its features and how the colors look on a pallet I created.

Click Below to go to the Field Sketch Kit by Sakura.

Sakura Koi 24

Alcohol Ink, first picture

So a few weeks ago, I went to an art festival and saw some really cool works in Alcohol Ink and figured that it looked interesting as a medium to work in.

I went out and purchased a starter kit, some paper and a few other inks to get started and just started splashing some ink on a 4" x 6" piece of small paper.

I thought I'd stick to some yellow, green, blue and gold.  Here's the picture:

The brand of inks I purchased made drips quite a bit larger than I though and people weren't kidding when they said the ink dried fast.  The problem in my picture came with the gold, it came out pretty fast and ended up being more than I had wanted.

Oh well, I'll definitely have to play more with the techniques, and I love the abstract nature of the art, but for a first piece, this wasn't too bad.

Below is the kit I purchased.  I haven't really used it much yet, and I frankly have nothing to compare it to, so as of yet I'll withhold my opinion or a review.