Trying to find the best ways of painting. Such as what to use to cover a painted area without using tape that peels the paint off? Wondering since my hands are shaky and always over-paint the painted areas. Also, what is the best distance at which to Air-brush Paint (Think that's the name) a model? And one last one, how would one go about painting a model multiple colors, like a tank that has camo?
Do you have an airbrush? What kind of an airbrush, because that makes a difference, also what sort of an air supply are you using for it? The type of airbrush you're using and how much pressure and how thin your paint is, and what you're using to thin it with all make a difference as to how far away your airbrush should be from what you're painting.
For most small parts and things like an engine, you can brush paint and they come out just as well if not even better. There is some technique involved there as well though. Airbrushes are better for larger areas. As far as tape peeling the paint off, if you use enamels that won't happen. However, you can use silly putty to mask stuff and a product made for sticking posters and whatnot to walls without nails called Blu Tack works well also, neither will pull off paint. You can also take index cards and make masks out of them and either hold them yourself or use small blobs of blu tack to hold them on the model but slightly away from the surface, that will get you a soft line instead of a sharp line on cammo and whatnot. I've also used silly putty for masking cammo out very successfully.
For a multi color cammo job you want to plan it all out first, then paint the lightest color all over. Mask the areas you want to keep light, then paint your next darkest color, then mask that and paint the darkest color last. It's hard to paint a light color over a darker color, but easy the other way around.
The brand of paint that you use makes a difference.
You can use Future floor wax, even with a brush over your finished paint job to give it a very nice, smooth and flat high gloss coat. Even if you're doing something that will be flat in the end, you'll want to Future it before you decal, that way the decals will go on without slivering and the edges of them will sort of disappear into the Future to boot. When you're done with that, then you can flat coat the model and the result is much much better. Basically, since you'll be gloss and flat coating all your models as you finish them, you don't have to worry about whether or not a color is flat or gloss, only if it's the right color. With that said, flats are easier to paint with.
If you pour some Future wax into a cup you can then dip your clear parts into it and then let them dry being careful not to get puddling. I like to set them on a paper towel so that the excess Future gets wicked away without the paper towel touching anything but the edges of the clear part. This will fill in and eliminate scratches in the clear parts and make them appear much much much thinner and more clear and glasslike.
There are decal softening solutions to make the carrier semi dissolve and conform to curves and into panel lines and the such, SolvaSet and MicroSol and MicroSet. They're pretty much indispensable for decaling.
When you're done painting and have put on your gloss coat, you can use a thin wash of a dark color and put a wash coat over the whole thing, let that dry, then follow up with a very light drybrushing of lightened base color. That will give details more depth and they'll appear much more realistic and less flat. That makes a huge difference.
There's a lot more but that's about it off the top of my head. Those sites that TheBug posted are excellent ones, also let me add this one, it's got absolute tons of tips, from very beginners all the way to advanced. Check out the Future tutorial, and the seam filling and Mr.Surfacer parts.
http://www.swannysmodels.com/ .
Also check out Finescale Modeler's website,
http://www.finescale.com/ .