Now it is ready for paint…
Starting off with the paint on the underside, I tried the layering technique. I used various greens, greys applied through a variety of airbrush stencils.
The closer the stencil to the model, the harder the splatter marks. The further away, the softer the marks. Ripped scotchbrite was also useful for this.
Next I applied light coats of Mr Color Sky to try and unify the finish. Trying not go too far is the key. I did go a bit further than I wanted so ended up doing some more splattering over the sky with some light greys.
I failed with the layering technique on the top surfaces, this was mainly due to the two colour camouflage adding an extra layer of paint over the marbling.
In the end I just used the splatter masks over the base colours. And to be honest this is a lot quicker and easier than doing it under the main colours.
For the Dark Earth, like the Wellington I built a few years ago, I went with Spencer Pollard’s mixture of Tamiya paints. It is 4 Parts XF-52 Flat Earth; 2 Parts XF-3 Flat Yellow; 1 Part XF-51 Khaki Drab, and 1 Part XF-2 Flat White.
It’s a bit lighter than my usual favourite Mr Color but I like the lighter dark earth for early war aircraft. I have no idea if it’s accurate but it looks good to my eye.
Mr Colour and SMS Dark Earth were used to add some tonal variation / splatters via the Airbrush Splatter masks.
Masks were made by scaling up the plan of the camo pattern and printing it out on self-adhesive label paper.
The dark green is Tamiya XF-81. I used this mainly because I wanted to use the old bottle up.
Usually I use Mr Color Dark Green, XF-81 looks a shade lighter to me but it still looks good. If they do it in lacquer I may switch to it.
Mr Color and Tamiya Dark Green along with some other random greens and greys were used for splattering. I also adjusted the SMS Dark Earth to make it more brown (it is far too yellow for me) and used it through the splatter masks over the green.
I find with some models there is a make or break part of the kit. On this kit it’s the clear front parts. Unfortunately I dropped it on the bench and cracked the front nose join!
After calming down I re-glued the nose join and touched up the paint. I then pulled off the masking to make sure everything was still ok. Thankfully it was. Not perfect, but good enough to get it a reprieve from the bin.
Paul Bentham says
Hi Callum,
Firstly, congrats on a great build and thanks for the tips re the cockpit canopy assembly. One question re the aerial wire: what material did you use and how did you fix it? I’ve recently restarted the hobby after a 49 year May off and have a couple of kits on the bench that need both rigging lines and aerial wire and I’m having issues so any tips you can pass on would be appreciated.
Many thanks
Paul B
Calum Gibson says
HI Paul, thanks for the compliment, I’m happy with the build.
As for the aerial, it is ezy line . This is an elastic type thread which I think is for tying fishing flies. The advantage of this is that it being elastic means it won’t break when it’s bumped. It’s fixed with CA glue at one end, then stretched to the other end with another small drop of CA to hold it. You don’t need to stretch it to tight, just so it is taunt.
The Isolators were just blobs of white glue painted when they have dried.
Geoff has some info in the techniques bank on Aerials as well