When I last left off with this build the interior was completed and the fuselage halves were coming together. With that behind me the build progresses quite quickly and easily. I had mentioned a few small annoyances with the construction phase up to this point like location pins being too large etc., but I must say the large pieces like the wings and tail surfaces come together quite well.
The main float
One area that is a bit disappointing is the attachment of the main float. To be as large as it is I’d like to see a little more girth in the attachment points than what’s given. Because of the precariously small attachment points I went against my original plan to paint and weather this part separately and add it at the end. I just really felt like I needed a strong bond here, so I opted to glue it down with solvent and give it a while to dry. However, once it was dry the attachment proves quite strong, so other than some odd airbrush manipulation to get around here things should be fine.
There’s really not much more to mention regarding construction. It’s all straightforward and I didn’t do anything worth chronicling here, so let’s just move to the fun: painting and weathering!
Painting and weathering
The first step for me here is to prime the model. The “to prime or not to prime” debate in scale modeling can be quite contentious, but I always do so for a number of reasons. First, primer lets me more easily find flaws. It also gives me an even smooth surface to work with, and given all the abuse I’m going to be throwing at this model, it’s a nice security blanket to ensure good adhesion. And, finally, I like to work with a black base, so I need a black primer.
It’s Prime Time
(Note: Jim’s kindly shared his thoughts on weathering and some good tips and advice there is too – you can see it in full in your SMN Techniques Bank – GC)
For this build I continued with my use of Mr. Paint products and opted for their black surface primer. I must say, compared to my usual Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500 this primer is quite thin taking a few coats to build up an even finish, but otherwise I found it to perform nicely.
I do plan to add a little bit of chipping here and there, but I don’t plan to chip any of the white on the undersurfaces, so I opted to paint this area first. Here is where the black base comes in. This is a technique that has been around for ages, but only recently “rediscovered” by a peer. I’ll explain the process here.
The first step is to build up a marbled, or uneven, layer of the base color. Here I’m using MRP’s Navy White (MRP-99). I’ve been doing this technique for a while now, and while I’ve used other lacquers like Mr. Color to great effect, I find MRP to be perfectly formulated for this technique. For this first step I use the paint straight from the bottle. It’s pre-thinned to a perfect consistency for the type of small delicate spraying I need here. There is no mystery really. Just get in close with a small spray pattern and lay down a random uneven coat.
The purpose here is to build tonal variation into the base color. This can be done in many ways; a lot of modelers opt for oil dot filters for the same effect, but I find this to enhance the effect even better.
The next step is quite easy. We load the airbrush with a thinned down pot of the base color. Mr. Color – being so thin already – doesn’t require but a couple of drops of lacquer thinner. I prefer Mr. Leveling Thinner as it has a flow agent and retarder. It makes the paint silky smooth, but you only need a couple of drops with Mr. Paint.
Now I slowly build up the color layer over the marble coat. The great thing about this technique is that it’s additive. You can go too far, but if you do you don’t really ruin the model, you just eliminate the variance. I’ve found that the largest learning curve with this technique is not adding too much of the blend layer. Once other colors and decals and clear coats and all your other weathering are added the effect becomes quite subdued, so the real challenge is learning when you’ve blended enough.
You can see from the photos that we have a nice tonal variety to the white. This will play great with subsequent weathering.