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Hi,
I'm new, but have been lurking here for a long time slurping up airbrushing and painting tips.
I'm currently at work on a bandai A-Wing and after some labourious masking to create a triangle on the fuselage I ended up with a partial mess.
I'm willing to take the blame for probably over spraying a bit, thus the leaks but I'm not really sure tape would have prevented this.

It seems like taping wouldn't actually work to deal with all the intricate panel lines and the indent in the nose. Am I supposed to liquid mask here?

Finally, this is on top of varnish, so in theory I could subtractively correct with some soap and water and a brush (or go over it with blue) but I'm worried it'll just wreck the existing clean edges.

Hopefully the image attached, thanks all!

Masking is just about my least favorite thing to do for this exact kind of reason, but there are a few things you can do to help in these situations. When applying the tape, you can use something like a toothpick to help burnish the tape down into all of the contours and ensure you have a nice seal all the way around. You can also help a little during the actual spraying of the paint. I like to do a really light coat around the edge of the pattern first and give that a minute to dry. This can help form a bit of a paint seal around the tape edge prior to applying your full coats to build up the color.

Spray lightly (ie don't put it on 'wet') and importantly, away from the masked edge, never toward. This helps prevent spraying going under the tape.

Ah I actually did try the burnishing but did not actually know about the sealing trick!

I am def guilty of spraying wet, I had a hard time managing a more watered down paint - I'll have to practice some more.

Cheers!