Italeri Boeing Chinook HC Mk2 1:48

Painting a different way

After studying my reference photos, I spent some time thinking how I wanted our Chinook to look, fresh from the factory just doesn’t do it for me, they always have a well faded and mottled appearance. As we are using a mono-colour European NATO Green my usual method of grey primer, pre-shading panel lines and darker areas, then overshooting with a top coat followed by lightened post shading may not produce what I am looking for here. It’s a fine method for a grey on grey subject, but I always find any other colour combination leaves me fighting the grey primer. Time for something completely different (for me anyway).

The technique commonly referred to as ‘Black basing’ caught my eye, why not give that a go? This technique is for all intents and purposes, the inverse of grey primer and pre-shading, where we prime in black and then build up the effect from there.

First stage is simple enough, for this I used Mr Color Black Primer 1500 from a rattle can. I have come to favour this product as it has a self-levelling component that leaves you with a very nice smooth surface to work with and it also dries very quickly, within minutes in fact.

At this stage you have to admit the all black Chinook does look real mean and bad ass ☺. Just for some contrast I have popped in one of the partially painted metallic coated exhaust cans (more about them later).

Stage 2 is to begin applying the base colour, in this case Gunze European Green 302 but in a random mottled or marbling way. Using a 0.18 needle airbrush with paint mix around 50/50 with thinner we apply a mix of tight wavy, squiggly patterns and dots over the whole surface of the airframe. No need to avoid panel lines or just do panel centres, completely random everywhere, nothing straight or angled.

Painting…