Airbrushes and apartments don't get along (unless you have a super-cool landlord).
The channel I want to shade is maybe .2-.3 mm wide so I'm going to trust a good 000 brush and really thin down a clear type of paint like "black smoke" to get the effect (or a 50/50 mix of black smoke and clear varnish). For example, Tamiya panel liner would be too heavy (I already tried it), it needs to be very subtle- just enough to highlite the outline of the door.
On the real car, the fuel door covers an area that's painted the same shade as the rest of the car. What I've got now is an area that used to look like a bulge in the fender before I carved out the extra paint in the channel, if that makes sense.
The other plan is mix maybe 1 part of Tamiya clear (turn signal) orange with 3 or 4 parts of clear gloss then really thin it down and apply it over the Lava Orange base coat.
One thing about Lava Orange is that it looks like a fairly "bright" or strong shade of orange in strong light but looks more "pastel" in darker conditions. Weird but neat.
