Global Scale Modeller

Here I go again!

More paint practice, this time with non-metallic paint. Today's target is a really old mold from Airfix. Awful mold, to say it in a nice way. But, who cares? Some 30 pieces in all, perfect for practice!

First layer of paint over a rather uneven layer of primer. I guess I'll need at least 2 more layers of paint before going to the second camouflage color. The Airfix drawings actually suggests black (!) and green, but I'm going to paint it with green and brown instead. An while waiting for the paint to dry, I couldn't resist painting some details as well. The pilot's face is actually as poor as it seems on the pictures. I'm going to try adding a little hint of brighter skin colors to try to highlight the nose, cheeks and forehead.

As Sweden as well as some other European countries celebrate Walpurgis Eve - and in the case of Sweden - also the King's 70th birthday, I spent the afternoon doing some paint job. Thin, thin, thin layers of green paint on my Yak. So thin, the paint dried up enough to allow a new layer when all other parts had been painted. Giving it some 5-6 layers of paint were easy. I also tried to grind the wings with a 1000 grit wet paper. At a "mere" 2 or 3 layers of paint it turned out really good, giving them a really smooth surface, although some of the elevated details lost a little paint. I'll try again tomorrow when the additional paint layers have cured.

Very nice work so far! Airfix old moulds are horrible, so will be interested to see if this goes together at all well.

Gluing time. Since I've painted the parts individually, the poor fitting is more than visible. Also, the stabilizers had such poor fitting they kept falling off. But that was nothing that couldn't be remedied with a little well-balanced clay blobs.

My camera got the white-balance totally off in the last picture - it was actually dark green, rather than ligh bluish. Anyway. I've completed it now.

I was quite nervous about doing the matte varnish. All other planes - especially the Junkers Ju-87D I built recently - got horrible white milky streaks and blobs. So I'll give you some before-and-after images:

First before matte varnishing; Everything is painted with gloss varnish and decals in place. Looks quite ok: Now, lets look at the final result, with matte varnish in place. As can be seen, especially on top of the fuselage behind the canopy, there are white blobs where I lifted the brush, and white streaks at the panel lines, rivets etc and some brushmarks are clearly visible. This time I was really careful about painting with quite diluted varnish, and painting really thin layers, immediately ensuring no build-up of excessive varnish where I put down or released the brush etc, but still I got the whitish result.

I think I'll change varnish, because I really think there's something wrong with my bottle. Unfortunately, my model-shop doesn't have a lot of turnaround of paints, so I'll buy from another store.

Apart from that - lessons learned:

• Paint alongside the wings, not in the direction of flight - reduces buildup of excessive paint at the leading and trailing edges. Generally, really avoid painting perpendicular to any sharp edge.
• Grind with 2000 grit before applying last paint layer before the gloss varnish - the surface will get super-smooth! As a side-effect, although rivets and other elevated details may loose some paint, but the final layer will make those details appear a little lighter.
• Grinding should probably be done perpendicular to the direction of paint for best result - got to try that on the next model.
• I've gotten a good understanding on how to paint thin layers to an acceptable result.
• Do NOT use household masking tape. Use proper model masking tape such as Tamiya's. Otherwise, there will just be a bloody mess of bleeding blobs.
• Make sure the paint is properly thinned when painting the pilot.

In conclusion: Purpose achieved - I got better at painting. Model result: The paintjob turned out to be the best camouflaged aircraft I've done. I didn't bother puttying nor being careful about removing excess flesh, so it looks quite horrendous. As always, I've brush-painted with Humbrol acrylics, and photographed with a Canon EOS 760D+50mm 1/4f prime lens.

... and some more shots:

Very nice work!!