Global Scale Modeller

I have heard a lot of people talking about pre-shading and was wondering what it is. Also how do you do it?

It is done to shade/ show off the panel lines on aircraft. You simply paint a dark colour onto the panel lines over the lighter primer/ basecoat. This way the panel lines will be shaded after the main colour has been added on top. It is best done with an airbrush but possible with brush just not as easy.

Hope that helps

DC10 wrote:I have heard a lot of people talking about pre-shading and was wondering what it is. Also how do you do it?

For aircraft it involves highlighting all the panel lines with (usually) black paint, airbrushed as shown below



You then apply the base colours in thin coats leaving the black preshading just showing through the paintwork.



You can then accentuate even further by adding panel lines using a darker shade of the base colour this is called post shading

Hope that helps

Just to clarify whilst its a common technique for aircraft it can be useful on light coloured armoured vehicles as a way of add more natural looking shadows to recessed areas. I used to to good effect on my AS90 and Challenger 2 builds.