Newbie messes up painting hammerhead

Hi everyone, I'm assembling my first army and new to painting.

This is my first attempt at painting a vehicle. I tried to replicated the GW basic colours for a Tau Hammerhead, but did an awful job. I used masking and an airbrush but I had paint soak under the masking tape and I think I applied it much to thick because the paint lines are now actual raised edges. I was advised to post my problem here, in the hopes that some of you might have suggestions for how to fix this. Should I strip the paint and try again? Is that even possible? Should I just buy a new hammerhead?

Even if I didn't do such a terrible job technically, I don't even think I like the colours. The rest of my army is all Tau Light Ochre and this is ended up much darker, predominantly XV88 and Mournfang Mold. I think my next attempt will be to look more like the camouflage from the Taros Campaign, light ochre with airbrushed streaks.

Thank you for any advise you my be able to offer.

it sounds like you would be best off stripping the paint. 

goto canadian tire, and in their pressure washer supplies, you'll find some 4L jugs of cleaner called Simple Green. One of the jugs will be a purple liquid, and its call the Heavy Duty version. 

pour enough of this into a container, undiluted, that will fit the hammerhead and keep it submerged in the liquid.  leave it overnight.

the next morning, take the model out of the liquid and place it under warm running water and scrub with a toothbrush.  this will make the paint come off. 

If you still have some paint that's being stubborn about coming off, just give it another soak for about 3 or 4 hours and repeat the scrubbing.

oh, and for your repainting attempt, instead of normal masking tape, use painters frog tape from walmart.  it does a better job of keeping your lines sharp and not bleeding paint into the masked off area.  just make sure you rub the edges of the taped areas really good before airbrushing to make sure the tape is properly covering before you paint.

I'm astonished at how well that worked. The paint came off with minimal scrubbing. It didn't even remove the chaos black undercoat. Thank you very much for your advise! This time I'm practicing on plasticard before committing to another pattern.