Painting tips requested

I'm not a ship builder but my Father has built quite a few wooden ship kits , mainly Artisina kits .( I'm talking sailing ships here ) On the deck planking he used a fine tip marker pen to colour the edges of the planks to represent the different colour of the caulking that was used between them.

Straight lines ,I assume you mean the water line? you can use a toolmakers marking gauge , spray the lower hull colour first roughly where the water line will be on the model then set the model up level on a stand on a flat surface ,determine where the waterline is to be ,set the gauge up with a pencil and draw the line.Cut strips of masking tape and mask following the line carefully ,rubbing down the tape to make sure you there will be no bleed under .Mask off the rest of the hull then spray the main colour .

If the superstructure is camouflaged them you probably will have to paint as you go.

Start with a fundamental choice. Do you want it to look pretty, or to look scale. Many of the wooden kits use some very nice appearing hardwoods for the planking. Many folks varnish the wood, to highlight this appearance, even if the real ship would have been painted.

Others are after authenticity, and want the model to resemble as closely as possible the real object. They use flat or matt paints. Since matt paints are easier to apply, many of these folks brush paint the model. For straight lines hobby shops carry special masking tapes such as the Tamiya stuff, that works much better than hardware store masking tapes (it is a lot more expensive too).

While I do have an airbrush, and use it at times on model ships, I still do a lot of painting on them, especially for older prototypes that were actually made of wood. For steel-hulled vehicles I do use airbrush or spray cans.