The Little Details

So over the Easter weekend I managed to grab a couple of short sessions where I could work on some of the more detaily bits of the start of my desert air force.  I wanted to get the nose cones done in red, which is not what Airfix recommend on their box but it's what the majority of images I've seen have and that's good enough for me.

Decided on gunmetal for the exhausts and guns rather than boring black, a bit more metallic than I was perhaps expecting but it should/might dull down with the weathering.

Not perfect I know and I have to make a few touch ups where I've strayed a little, still remembering the best order to paint things I guess.  Another coat of yellow on the prop ends as well.

I know that there probably weren't any mk1 spits in North Africa, especially not with red noses, but as I've said before I don't mind. 






So just touch ups and decals to go.  Oh and that missing wheel and strut from the Tomahawk.

A Splash of Colour

Well it's taken me long enough but I finally got the brushes out again to splosh a bit of paint about. 

Having read that Humbrol 93 (Desert Yellow) was a replacement for what should have been Middle Stone (which is actually Humbrol 225), so I thought I'd go with the correct colour.  What I wasn't prepared for was how dark 29 Dark Earth was/is, especially compared to the image Airfix had put on the back of the box!

So I pop open my brand new 'tin' of middle stone to find it half empty and thick!  Thank god I have a bottle of matt acrylic medium to hand, a good slug of it and a good mix and we were good to go, well nearly.  First attempt was still a bit thick but a bit more medium and I was happy.

Does that look too dark?  Or just compared to the Airfix version of the colour scheme!

Plenty of detail yet to be done on the Tomahawk, but I still managed to spot a bit I missed in the tail.  Oh well I'll see if I can cover it with some weathering (something else I haven't properly done before).

Curse of sticking on a canopy before painti

Well the Spit looks to have come out a bit better being done second and having the paint that bit thinner, which had the additional benefit of preserving the detail of the panel lines - or was that just the Revell kit versus an Airfix? But as mentioned in an earlier post this was a kit my youngest knocked together some time ago and he stuck the canopy on before painting the pilot or any other internal detail.  Oh well perhaps it wont be as noticeable once the canopy frame is painted in.


So overall I'm happy as I've never really done camo schemes on aircraft, I'm mainly used to painting little men.  Looking forward to getting the details done and then to try some weathering which I hope will make the difference.  Any advice on that would be welcome, products, techniques, what ever.