Weathering a black cockpit

washes are kind of hard to do on a black base. Burnt umber will give a dirty grimy look in recesses, but has a very brownish tone against the black background. Highlightng is easy though, use a very dark gray to show off raised details. and maybe a bit of bare metal here and there to indicate wear.

It helps, too, if you don't paint the pit plain black.  Try adding a drop or two of white or light grey to the black paint.  Now its more of a dark grey which has a faded look to it.  Drybrushing the details with grey or silver brings out the edges, as well.

Thanks for the help.! keith

good advise, thanks keith

Painting the cockpit or dusting the upper/exposed surfaces with Tamiya's Rubber Black (my new favorite black) could help simulate sun fading.  Otherwise, you're 'chipping' the corners with little dabs of light gray or flat aluminum to simulate where that black paint has been chipped off.  

You could also use different 'gloss' paints, like flat overall with some semigloss in some high wear areas.  Or even purposely paint a section with a layer of paint with a brush to simulate a 'repair' that needed touchup in the field.  

Gene Beaird,

Pearland, Texas

CrashTestDummy

Painting the cockpit or dusting the upper/exposed surfaces with Tamiya's Rubber Black (my new favorite black) could help simulate sun fading.  Otherwise, you're 'chipping' the corners with little dabs of light gray or flat aluminum to simulate where that black paint has been chipped off.  

You could also use different 'gloss' paints, like flat overall with some semigloss in some high wear areas.  Or even purposely paint a section with a layer of paint with a brush to simulate a 'repair' that needed touchup in the field just because you _know_ the Airman who's ordered to 'fix it!' isn't going to spend a lot of time making it look pretty.  

Gene Beaird,

Pearland, Texas

An easy way to add wear areas to flat paint is to burnish them with a slightly stiff brush, cloth, coffee filter or Q-tip (whatever fits the space or falls to hand). Floquil's Grimy Black is another good base color if you like enamels.

Mike

Simply dry brushing with only a slight hint of color (silver, gray, aluminum) on your brush to highlight raised details and edges should work great in that black cockpit.

Fly-n-hi

It helps, too, if you don't paint the pit plain black.  Try adding a drop or two of white or light grey to the black paint.  Now its more of a dark grey which has a faded look to it.  Drybrushing the details with grey or silver brings out the edges, as well.

I'm doing a Coast Guard Jayhawk.  They seem to keep those birds pretty clean, so I don't intend to weather it too much.  But I always like to tone down flat black.  I mixed up two parts flat black with one part schwarzgrau.  It looks fine. I did the floor, console, IP and fuselage sides with that mix.

Don Stauffer

I'm doing a Coast Guard Jayhawk.  They seem to keep those birds pretty clean, so I don't intend to weather it too much.  But I always like to tone down flat black.  I mixed up two parts flat black with one part schwarzgrau.  It looks fine. I did the floor, console, IP and fuselage sides with that mix.

That sounds close to what I use.  I've discovered that I like to mix 2 parts Mr Color Flat Black with 1 part Mr Color Engine Grey.  That seems to make a faded color that is pretty convincing to the naked eye.  Engine Grey and Schwarzgru look pretty similar so I guess great minds think alike...right?

 On variants of the 60, the floors and seats get pretty dinged up by flight boots and should be drybrushed an aluminum color and should be more heavily drybrushed than the consoles and instrument panel.  The pedals are also metal and should be heavily drybrushed.

 The center console and instrument panel should be a light grey/light tan color as the faces are a translucent plastic that is painted black (this is so that it will allow light through on the areas that aren't painted for words or markings).  Light ghost or Camoflauge Grey would probably do nicely for drybrushing. The upper part of the instrument panel can't be reached while in flight and generally show very little wear.  

 On Navy versions (not sure about Army/AF/CG variants, but I imagine they are similar if not the same) on the upper and lower consoles, knobs are a darker grey (Medium grey maybe), switches are silver, and any "buttons" are probably circuit breaker panels and they're all black.  The circuit breaker panels are behind the pilot's heads and on the sides of the upper console.  Hope that helps.

Groot