Good Afternoon FSM!
This is my first full post on this forum! since my return to modeling a year ago, I had yet to do a Jug. Recently, while browsing one of my favorite hobby shops in Austin, TX (shout out to Kings Hobby in ATX) I rescued a 1/48 Hase' Jug from a collection procurement at a decent price. several months prior to that I had picked up a set of BarracudaCals decals that included Lt. Donald Karnes' P-47 "Dallas Blonde." since I love to build aircraft flown by Texans, it didn't take me long to decide this was the direction I wanted to go with this build. Below is the final result
while in the end I didn't feel like this was the show-stopper I'd hoped it would be, I took a lot of victories away from this build. I really tried to push the realism and challenge myself. The build process began, as with most aircraft, with the cockpit. after priming the selected parts with MiG black primer, the interior color was laid down with a mix of Tamiya XF-5 and XF-4 at approximately 50-50. I still like this mix as a good representation of US Interior Green. The seatbelts are homemade with masking tape and lead wire and the weathering done with pigments, black and brown washes, and silver pencil.
Next I took a page from Lawdog114's playbook and wired up my radial.
Post assembly, I shot the model with black MiG primer and mixed a Mk 1 eyeball representation of Yellow Zinc Chromate from Tamiya paints For the wheel wells. This was followed by my version of black basing using XF-19. (Primarily because I have a whole lot of it.) I thin the grey paint heavily with denatured alcohol and mottle the interior of the panels. In the end this gives me a nice mix of black basing and pre-shading that has historically given me good results.
Next, the yellow and red went down so that it could be masked off under the base colors.
base colors where a mix of XF-62 lightened with XF-49 Khaki. I think this is a solid representation of OD 41 and adds nice variation in the color. The neutral grey is Tamiya NG varied with small amounts of flat white.
At about this point in every build, I forget to continue taking pictures. Decals went down with a combination of Micro Set and Tamiya Mark Fit Strong. my weathering process consists of a lot of airbrush work with heavily thinned varying shades of Tamiya browns sprayed along panel lines and in collection points to represent dirt and grime. Chipping was done with a Pimsicolor silver pencil.
I hope this post was informative and enjoyable. I'd love feedback as I'm always striving to improve. I know my style lands solidly in the center of historical versus artistic. I'm also a digitial artist, so I m always going to drift a little more toward the artistic side. On a final foot note, I know Karnes only scored three kills in this bird and the kill marks are anachronistic, but I couldn't help myself. They just looked cool.
Thanks. Happy Modelling