I would go with a brown/tan color, although i'm sure black would still be ok. White can be a tricky color, but I've used Gunze or Tamiya white and they cover fine in the first pass or two. Just don't use red for the preshade...you'll have pink lines.

What kind of plane are we talking about here, and how dirty/scuffed up do you want it to look?

My preferred method for white, instead of bothering with pre-shading, is to paint the entire area black (dark gray would also work), then use a really good white (Gunze C69 Offwhite is my favorite...but their other whites and Tamiya XF-2 work pretty well), thin it way down and build it up gradually. The black base will make it far easier to see areas that need more coverage, won't leave you with stark demarkations between the gray primer and black pre-shading, and if you cut yourself off at the right point, will leave some excellent variations.

Here's a very recent example. I left the white intentionally patchy because the visual contrast of the candy canes, not to mention the rest of the scheme when it goes down, will knock the contrast among the white down by at least half.

I also once upon a time tried pre-shading with tan.

But it kinda-sorta vanished. So I use black now.

I don't know if this will help, but I have been experimenting, getting ready to paint an F-14 kit, and the underside will be white.  I have been experimenting on a kit I pulled from under the bench.

With this one I rattle-can primed it, then preshaded a flat black.  I did not preshade it very dark, I could have put on a heavier coat.  The random black was in hopes of coming out with a mottled/faded look.

And this is what it looked like after laying down white.

I don't have a camera that will take decent pictures, so these may not help at all.  In this case, I never really got it looking white, it still looked more light gray.

My next attempt will be trying what DoogsATX suggests, beginning with a black base, and trying to slowly build up the white.  I am experimenting at the same time with thinners, which does not make it any easier on me.  Probably my biggest issue is going slowly enough with the final coats.  If I am not too embarrassed, I will post more pictures.

Nice job mgh! Not too shabby for a beginner. Show us more...

I came back to the hobby about a year and a half ago, I just don't have a very strong skill set yet  But I do have fun!

Hopefully tomorrow I can post pictures of the other method.

The fun is what it's all about! :)

EBergerud:

I am not meaning to hijack your thread here.  I would be happy to create another thread rather than clutter yours up more with my experiments.

Interesting ideas guys. I've been using light blue, something like Luftwaffe underside blue, to me bluish shadows look more white than grey shadows somehow.

I went back to black, then started with a very thinned white coat.  I think it was just blending, not getting any contrast, looks like it is just turning gray.

Then I took some white, thinned only slightly from what I would normally use in the AB, and started going over it again.

Still unsure of this.  Any comments on where I could go from here would be appreciated.

It may be that thickening the ratio for this purpose is a good idea. My guess is that if you would have continued with your first ratio and got the plane about the right shade you wanted for the shadow area you could have continued by spraying further coats but avoiding the areas you wanted shadowed and then given the whole thing one light dusting at the end. Although for every task there is a solution. I use low viscosity/low psi airbrushing almost exclusively. (Armor guys have probably ruined me.) It has many advantages. However, a higher viscosity mix will allow a raised psi (to 20+) and that will aid in atomization which I think is why many good modelers use it for laying down a base coat or painting the hull of a big ship. Be interesting to know what PSI is generated by paint in spray cans.

As for when to stop, I guess that references earlier comments about what you want to emulate. Any aircraft that's been in serious service will look definitely "weathered" - imagine what your car would look like driving across Nebraska at 800 mph not to mention fluids. (I'd strongly guess that modern paints are much tougher than WWII types.) This is only my humble opinion (and it is humble) but I would say that both ships and aircraft are usually under-weathered if duplicating a real object is the idea. (The current Finescale highlights a splendid build of HMS Ajax as their "weathering example." It's a wonderful model, but to my eyes much too subdued for a mid-war British cruiser, the kind of ship that would have been at sea a lot. Our vessels in 1944 - when they were on extended service - often show extraordinary wear if you can get the right photos. Always the call is "don't over do it" but I think that may be good modeling advice in general but is not appropriate if the object had seen very heavy service.) The USAF is expensive because our planes are in the air often and many are as old as their pilots so a good case could be made for serious weathering.  But every plane is new once. Every aircraft must get the periodic proper tune-up and oil change. And a few are used for public relations purposes like the Blue Angels. So some planes might be bright and shinny.  So that's the bit. Do you want preshading to show shadow or to be an integral part of weathering? If it's the former, you want more white than if the later. Of course that could be bad advice - I have lots of that.

Eric

I don't think it's the age of the airframe so much (there are many B-52s and C-130s that look pretty nice) so much as the ratio of air to ground time. 

Look at an F-22, which is a total hangar queen, and it'll be pretty clean. Same goes for a stateside F-15E, etc. But if you look at a Marine AH-1W during Desert Storm (or an RAF Tornado hastily repainted for desert service) and they'll show wear and tear very fast. Likewise in WWII you had aircraft operating in heavy rotation, often far away from proper hangar facilities. I've heard references to flight crews waxing P-47s to eek out a few extra miles per hour, but it's tough to go down for a wax when you're flying sorties and the focus is on fuel, ammo, ordnance and any emergency maintenance to keep the thing airworthy.

I am hoping to go for a weathered look, though I have only had mediocre results in the past.

I have not had much luck finding in-service pictures of the F-14, which surprised me.  Most walk-arounds, with one notable exception, have been very clean aircraft, and google images comes back mostly with shots that look like PR photos, all nice and shiny clean.  No good shots of the hydraulic stains either :(

I am not sure if I will use weathering powders after paint, or washes or what, but one picture looked as though the underside was looking almost tan it was so dirty. 

Thanks for the feedback.

Google "F-14 images" and you'll get a boatload. Photos and film can be very tricky - much of weathering is in texture and that doesn't necessarily show up on an object viewed from a distance. The Federation of American Scientists has a big collection on military technology including a couple dozen shots of the F-14: some very clearly show noticeable weathering.

http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/man/uswpns/air/fighter/f14.html

I'd think that for weathering jets it would be of great help to really look closely at airliners the next time you're at the airport. Those craft are in the air daily. On an ad the plane will always look perfect. If you look at them on the runway, you can see what flying through a few thousand miles of atmosphere does to the plane. And I think the closer you look at real world objects the better you can interpret photos. My views on ship weathering changed dramatically a year or so back. I drove by a refinery in San Pablo Bay every third day. There are almost always tankers unloading. I began to look at the ships very closely. Pretty soon it was obvious that most ships were very faded, often heavily chipped and areas under the waterline had very pronounced "tidelines" of green or brownish organic material (a tanker is ideal because an unloaded vessel rides very high). But a few ships (probably recently from dry dock) look almost new. So you can weather with a light touch and point to clean planes or ships. But the opposite is true too - it's just a little harder to tell what you're looking for. I used to spend a lot of time of military bases and it struck me that our combat aircraft had a definite "lived in" look to them usually. I can't imagine a F-14 back from serious duty in the Gulf not showing some real wear.

Eric

Eric

You're right about age of the airframe. When I was confusing American officers on the subject of military history one of my students had just rotated from a tour flying B-52s. (His son had just joined the Air Force and wanted to fly B-52s: if he gets his wish the plane will be as old as his grandfather. Like warships in the age of Nelson.) He said that America's B-52s were airworthy because they all had come from SAC - those planes when compared to a civilian airliner - had lived the life of ease. Some were only the air once every couple of weeks. He also said almost all of the planes that had been sent to Vietnam for conventional bombing had piled up extraordinary number of hours and had almost all been retired. There's one on display at Travis AFB just up the road from my California place. It does redefine your idea of bomber. I first saw it (fortunately) when they still allowed people in the cockpit. The plane is immense - but the cockpit about the size of a closet. It's one huge bomb bay with wings. Scary really.

I've got two color documentaries on Jugs. Wyler's movie was set in Italy. The other one is about a 9th AF unit from early 1945. The 9th unit was flying every kind of jug you can think of in every state of repair. Some were even OD. (Why throw anything away? Any Jug deployed would have had combat utility.) As any soldier can testify, however orderly the military tries to be, war is chaos and untidy.  

PS: which Dread did you pick - Zvezda or Trumpie?

Eric

Thanks for the link.  There were some great photos for reference there.

You are correct, a search will return a boatload of images, but I still do not find many showing age.  Lots like this one:

www.jimbrooks.org/.../f1439.jpg

Those are some nice pics. =]

I'd bet a dime against a dollar that if you looked at planes back from tour that the pic you've got would be very typical showing that "lived in" look and that if you saw it closer it would appear even more lived in. The more I look at real machinery and then films/photos the more I think that weathering should be much more dirt/grime/smudges & a kind of fluid look. (That's one reason why I'm getting very interested in Medea Art.Com paints that are acrylics designed for painting fabrics. Railroaders use them for weathering. Never seen any brew that does a better job of creating the look and texture of a proper smudge. They're widely available in any art store and millions of places on line: try one bottle of "transparent smoke" to get the idea.) Add exhaust where appropriate.  And I'd guess that these effects on a photo will more often be obscured than created by camera angle. (Some scenes on my P47 documentary show this vividly: the same plane will go from shinny to "lived in" just by turning it's angle to the camera.)  Serious service would throw in some degree of fading depending upon time and area (such as off a carrier deck). In general, I these effects deserve more emphasis than paint chipping and the rust beloved by armor modelers. I bought the new Mig Jimenez book called FAQ2 which is worth it's stiff cost. Looks like the "Spanish school" gurus are looking more now at the texture of the metal itself and the way it interacts with various uglies. At least planes don't usually get hit by rust, but I guess the airframes were actually vulnerable. (Ship builders could employ a good dose of rust on some vessels methinks.)

I've always believed that if God wanted man to fly he would have given him propellers. So I don't build jets. (Might get a 262 or a F-86/Mig 15 combo - they're war era.) But hats off to those who do. I think they'd be really challenging builds.

Eric

Thanks for the replies, interesting info.  (I also prefer propeller driven aircraft, but pick up a jet every now and again).

My airbrush came with 3 bottles of the Medea Com-Art paints, so I could AB some for the fun of it to see how it acted.

One of the challenges I face is that I have rarely been up close to aircraft, and on the occasion I have it has been at an airshow, where they are in far better condition than something that has been in service, so I am having to rely pretty heavily on pictures I can find.  One of the things I notice on most war birds is the mottled look the paint gets, and that is one of the things I want to work on.

What is the P-47 documentary you mention?  The P-47 is possibly my favorite aircraft of all.  One of these days I am going to have to pony up the cash to buy one of the Tamiya kits that DoogsATX recommends.  In the mean time I ought to pick up Revels P-47N. 

Don't want to earn demerits from the Revelgram fans, but I wouldn't build a Revell P-47 unless you plan on collecting Jugs. Scalehobbyist.com has the best day in day out prices on the net for models and they have one of the Tamiya's for $33 and a Hasegawa for $30. I've got the Tamiya P-47M and it's a very special kit. I've got the razorback which may well go to the 1943 group build where I'll live this coming year. Good evidence that when they put their mind to it, Tamiya can make the best 1/48 scale planes in the business. I'd skip a pizza and buy a Tamiya Jug. Frankly I think there are better budget alternatives. Academy's P-47s are often on sale (Squadron has the 47D Bubbletop for $24 now) and Swanny among others gives the basic kit pretty high marks. If you want to bargain hunt, try to get the Arii P-47D razorback. They're going out of print but they are still out there on eBay and some Asian sites. (I've bought several models from Asia and it's worked splendidly: bad place to buy in bulk because shipping goes up fast, but reasonable on one kit.) I bought that one for a song. It's a little basic on the inside but it seems well shaped to me and has nicely done slightly recessed panel lines and is a very clean build. Might want some decal film though.

The documentary is part of a 2 DVD set and available at Amazon for $5. It includes the two William Wyler documentaries. Search  "Memphis Belle and P-47 Thunderbolt". These are historic films and any WWII junkie must own them. "Thunderbolt", looked at from a distance, is a terrifying show: it wasn't the idea but you can quickly understand why US fighter bombers were looked at with fear by the civilians of occupied Europe along with men in the Wehrmacht. Both discs have extras: on Thunderbolt it's a silent film of the 362d Fighter Group of 9th AF and you'll see Jugs galore. Everything is in color and quite good for the era. Interviews with both plane's veterans included. And the aircraft do have the "lived in" look. Interviewing veterans used to help make my living and many observed that stateside "spit and polish" vanished when you got to the front.

I'd maintain that the best place to see wear on an aircraft, especially a jet, is to look closely at lots of airliners. These planes get a bath regularly, but are in the air daily (or so the owners hope) and give you a good idea of what a NMS looks like in the real world after a few flights across the USA or over a major ocean. Mileage will vary as they get cleaned up pretty well I'm told whenever they have their frequent check-ups. And owners don't want passengers to see a plane that looks like it will lose a wing. Private planes are in the air so much less that they're not as big a help, although I remember my brother's Beaver which was in the air daily every summer had showed lots of wear around that big radial even though service schedule was very rigid. Obviously museum planes are the most deceptive unless you can get into one of the workshops as is possible at museums like Chino or at Travis AFB. (And at Travis you can watch C-5As come and go: they are really big. Fifteen years ago it was easy to get on a military base. I once walked around Norfolk within a stone's throw of everything from fleet carriers to "boomers" on a very low level security pass which I don't think they checked. The Enterprise or Coral Sea when Alamedea was in operation were terrific places to jig for striped bass: huge shoals of bait fish would sit under the garbage disposal and you could often see the bass below them. The good old days. Rot in hell bin Laden.)

Eric

I will order that DVD.  I wonder if it is the same one I saw many years ago on VHS, but I cannot remember the title of that one.

I do need to get a nice P-47 kit.

Thanks for the responses.

Two things:

First, Iwata/Medea Art.Com paints are a type of acrylic paint that has an odd agent - it's a little sticky like polymer based paints like Golden (or Vallejo Model Color) - but has some solvents too because the binding is not as intense. It's made for painting on fabrics. It may come as a jolt, but model paints are considered a real niche market to bigger concerns. I don't know about the Japanese brands but I believe the US paints are affiliated with commercial paint makers. Vallejo is a wing of a much larger art paint company - check their main web site and you'll see. Fabric or canvas painting with an airbrush is a bigger market than styrene. (Stuff like helmets are a different matter.) Go check the big Chicago Airbrush Supply page - it's also the best place I know of to buy an airbrush. The paints they sell are all of this variety - they're either Art.Com, Createx, Golden Airbrush paints - the closest thing to model paint they sell is Golden Fluids. (That's a paint I like a lot, but few modelers would want to put up with the learning curve and unless you really like to use paints you could eat with no damage there's no real reason to. Or maybe not: I'm working on something. One thing you can see on museum planes is that WWII era aircraft don't look like cars. Cars, with that heavily baked commercial paint treatment, almost look like they're made of white, or gold or black metal. Warplanes look more like metal with paint on them. The polymer paints could be made to emulate that layered look if you did it right - I think. Long term project.) Golden Fluids are made for painting on canvas but work splendidly on any primed plastic - they're a lot like Model Color or Citadel. Not so Art.Com and the others. The fabric/canvas paints (they're made to airbrush straight from the bottle - that's why you got them with an airbrush - you'll note there's a BB in the bottom of the bottle which is remind the user that this kind of paint needs to be well shaken.) are almost like a cross between a paint and a liquid pigment. They're not designed to cohere well together or they wouldn't work on soft surfaces. But they will stick on plastic if the surface is well primed. I bought a batch of them intended for railroad weathering and they're very neat. None are as opaque as a model paint and some like "smoke" are translucent. So think of using a pigment in a setting solution like MIG makes, except that the texture and "look" is different. They're great for emulating grime. The railroad color "dirty oil" beats hell out of MIGs equivalent in my book - just add a drop of Future. Personally, I use them more with a brush than an airbrush. Anyway, mess around with an old model or prime some plastic spoons and try it out. I think nobody hears about them in the modeling world because people here are modelers first and painters second. Reverse the process and you get the kind of person that likes fantasy or military figures and buys stuff like Citadel. (Lord, MIG sells a middling oil paint they call Abteilung for more money per ounce than the greatest oil paints on earth like Sennelier. For model making you probably only need three colors and any decent brand would do - one tube will last for years and you'd never finish it.) I know modelers that have never been in an art store. If nothing else, it's the place to go for really good cheap paint brushes or high quality odorless mineral spirits for washes (try Gamsol from Gamblin paints - stuff works splendidly but leaves no footprint and almost lacks smell). For more detail go on the Iwata web site and look for their railroad weathering set - "Real Deal Weathering Kit: Tips and Techniques by Leslie Eaton." I know Blick sells Art.Com "Transparent Smoke" by the bottle so it's a $3 buy-in for anyone that's curious.

The P-47 tapes I described are three seperate shows. One is the famous William Wyler "Thunderbolt" which came out in 1947 - made after the more famous "Memphis Belle." They often come together and offer some of the best combat footage we'll ever see. Rare day that battles get filmed by Hollywood's finest. Wyler himself flew in Memphis Belle (the guy won about fifty Oscars give or take twenty) and passed out on a mission - one of his top assistant was killed on a B-17 during filming. At least they knew where to go if they wanted to show the inside of a bomber at war - a bomber at war even if the bullets were real. There is also an interesting piece of about a half hour of interviews with former Jug pilots. I'm not sure where the silent film comes from - someone's archive. There's no narration so it's just jugs on color film - just the thing for a jug fan and a jug modeler. I'd guess you saw the Wyler piece but not the silent feature.  As noted above where I've got the exact title, both are available on Amazon for $5.  

I checked out my Tamiya P47M again last night: it's really a sweet model. Just splendid. I've got one of their new Zero kits (the A6M3A) and their new IL-2: these are some of the finest kits I've ever seen in the box and the build reviews are all thumbs very high up. (I'm sure the techno police will find something to knock, but I've never known a model that didn't get some flack whether deserved or not.) Reminds you how Tamiya got to be the world's best known model company. Tamiya at its best is like the aircraft version of Tasca.

Eric

In the end, with maybe the exception of  some of the translucents for weathering, the Citadel, or Medea paints don't have any advantage over a Tamiya thinned properly?

If you still have the P-47M out, can you look to see what the Tamiya colors are that are called for?  Thanks

Just my opinion:

There's a good reason why Tamiya paints are used by so many top modelers. The solvent agent allows a very thin mix (do use Tamiya or Gunzer lacquer thinner: it really helps no matter what the A-20 fans think) and because it's solvent based the stuff will dry really fast. Indeed, tip clog is a problem you run into with some paints. The colors are very good - I'd bet good money that they use excellent chemical dyes for pigments across the board. But they are solvent paints - which means there are solvents in them. I've seen a chemical breakdown of some of their stuff and it's an impressive list of chemicals I've never heard of. Do note you won't find "non-toxic" anywhere now on their labels. And in the US they require warning labels. Personally, I don't think that's a real world problem if you are sane - although a mask is probably a good idea.

Water based paints like Vallejo or Model Master give up some of the advantages but have excellent pigments also and are easier to clean etc. Citadel or Vallejo Model Color in the modelling community are thought of as hand brush paints. (That's another advantage water based paints have. The solvent based paints with their high tech pigments are not very good for hand painting. I am not a fan of Vallejo Model Air because it's been so tuned for the airbrush that you get the disadvantages of a water based paint and few of the advantages.) If you understand the odd world of acrylic mediums, either are terrific with an air brush. So are Golden Fluids. They have a polymer agent (basically a liquid plastic that's largely water: but you'd notice with Golden that the paint separates very slowly - they recommend against over shaking. They also use inorganic pigments on many earth tone colors (dirt, or carbon, or rust etc - the real deal not chemical emulation) which means they vary widely on their opacity. But, because they tell you the opacity and the pigment, you can compensate for it. The Citadel or even more so Golden Fluids have great advantages but only if you're willing to put in the time to learn how they work. You sure can't beat the pigment quality: Golden pioneered artists acrylics in the 50s and have very demanding clients - people who paint for a living. That said, when the dust settles Tamiya is every bit as good in most areas (outside hand brushing) and for some things better. Except it's a solvent. I can drink Golden paints and it wouldn't kill me. I wouldn't try that with Tamiya or Gunze. Personally I've gotten very used to working in a room where you can't smell paint. (Not a purist though: certainly use lacquer thinner for airbrush cleaning.)  So certainly master Tamiya if you're new to modelling: it's the paint of choice for a reason. But you might want to mess around with Vallejo or German Revell Acqua Color or Floquil: they're very good in their own way. But you can't go wrong with Tamiya if you want a quality finish with the least bother.

Eric

Below is a pic of my Accurate Miniatures Avenger. As I have way too many planes inbound that will be wearing blue, I put this one in Atlantic anti-sub garb of dark gull gray and insignia white. (Deadly weapons: the CVE Bogue's aircraft were credited with 12 U-Boat kills and its escorts got five more. These "hunter-killer" groups helped shatter the U-boat menace in late 1943-early 44 when things had already turned against them. 

The plane was primed with Vallejo gray acrylic primer: I like that stuff a lot. I based the colors on Robert Archer's definitive book on US Aircraft colors and USAAF camo. If his samples are right, so are the colors. Insignia white has a slightly unbleached look so I put in some buff. I can see white is going to be tough to photograph. There are three shades of white base - the control surfaces were fabric and I want them to show a little so I darkened the tail and lightened the wings. I like the way the panel lines turned out. I preshaded with Golden Fluid black which is the most opaque paint I've ever seen. But the white (a mixture of titanium white - which is very bright - and buff) covers so well that I repainted thin lines along the major panels on the fuselage with a brush after the first pass. After airbrushing, you can't see a sign of it. I think panel lines are often overdone, but the Avenger's bulkheads are quite prominent so I wanted them to show and they do. The gray covered immediately and the panel lines are likewise about where I want them. On the gray portions you can see that there are three shades going progressively lighter. It looks a little klutzy now. But we have not begun to weather. There will be dot fading with oils, pin washes and we'll see what else. I'll certainly try post-shading with Art.Com: if it doesn't work, you have several minutes to remove the stuff entirely. But there will be some kind of wash and some proper exhaust: the pipes are as thick as a giraffe's neck and the Avenger had a big radial. The clear parts are already done and look okay.

This is a very complex kit - think Eduard. The instructions were terrible but thankfully there was a really good photo build on Aero scale that relied on the old AM web site which, I'm told, included photo builds of every kit they did. AM doesn't exist anymore so I'm glad someone got there first. Some of the interior and the landing gear would have been really tough with just the maddeningly vague instructions. Anyway, it's about where I want it. If the model fails it will be from something that happens from here on in. (I did a WIP thread under WIP: Fleet Air Arm Avenger. Not many followers so there aren't a lot of pics but you can get a good idea of the complex interior.

Eric

Looking good, love that color scheme.