Talk to me about pre-shading

Don Stauffer

An alternative for pre-shading is a pin wash.  This applies a black or very dark color only to recessed panel lines themselves.  You use something like a needle eye, old fashioned pen point, or a pin or rod of small diameter metal to apply a very thin wash directly to the recessed lines.  The wash is drawn along the recess.

 

I'd like to give that a shot.  Thanks for the explanation.

That's the way I've always done it.

An alternative for pre-shading is a pin wash.  This applies a black or very dark color only to recessed panel lines themselves.  You use something like a needle eye, old fashioned pen point, or a pin or rod of small diameter metal to apply a very thin wash directly to the recessed lines.  The wash is drawn along the recess.

Explain that to the IPMS world of judges.They need a wake up call.

I admit I'm stumped as to the value of it. If you look at panel lines on a real aircraft, they're thin and don't extend beyond the joint itself, but pre-shading makes it look as if the joint is wider than it actually is. To me, that's the opposite of realism. Maybe someone can set me straight.

Sorry for some spelling errors .I type very fast like an F4.

at the least I agree partially.I have Flown F-4s and had not seen a preside look.Just a streak effect on the aircraft.The aircraft is moving very fast.Ww2 aircraft may get away with 100% pre shaded.Any way,good luck on these styles of weathering.

Silver

Pre-shading gives you an almost even texture effect which aircraft did not have.

 

Pre-shading gives you an almost even texture effect which aircraft did not have.Pastel's is more a control as you go when creating the weathered effect on  past or present aircraft or armor.Pre-shading will work on certain areas like corners and raised edges.But not overall.example: The A-7H Greek Cosair jet is the best sample of a weathering effect and not showing an identicle effect on the other side of the body frame.

The only thing you could really do is to spray the model black, and then spray it again with OD, being "strategic" in how you aim and cover with the OD coat. You'd have to tilt, and possibly mask parts of the model to allow the black "pre-shade" to remain in shadow areas.

That being said, you really need to step up to an airbrush. Take the money you would put toward kits for the the few weeks or months and invest in one. Your enjoyment of the hobby and your results will go up ten-fold. I couldn't even imagine modeling without one.

You need an air brush for pre or post shading those thin lines around the panel lines or fading from the center panels out to the edges.

A method you can use to weather and fade OD (or any color and specially armor models)  is to use a DOT filter. This method uses small dots of artist oils like yellow ochre, red, orange, lighter greens to break up the monotone OD shade when streaked down and blended. Just make sure you have a barrier as using over acrylic otherwise the base coat will be toast.

Then you can follow up with some pin washes to pop some details.

Hello!

Maybe Leonardo da Vinci could pull it off without an airbrush, but there are also other methods to achieve the objective - and it is to make the model look more realistic and at the same time more interesting too look at. Preshading is supposed to show several effects of a real vehicle that are not there on the model if you just paint it one colour. Those effects have to do with the scale and lighting, but also with the acumulation of dirt in some places (panel lines, tight corners) and paint fading (more in direct sunlight, less where there is some shadow). And please remember, that you have a lot of freedom to choose colours for the preshading - not necessarily a darker shade of the base colour. Depends on what you want to show - I for myself, when doing certain Vietnam-era vehicles used the red clay colour to preshade OD surfaces and I liked the results - here are some examples:

Hope it helps - good luck with your builds and have a nice day

Paweł

I would not try it. First of all an airbrush is pretty key for that. Second, your base coat is so dark that the only preshade would be black. Take a look at doog's Vorpanzer build. He basically started out with a black tank and took it lighter.

You can sludge wash, pin wash or whatever darken the details, then work on the weathering. i'm building a Sherman too! These armor guys really go for the weathering.