Pre-shading a P-40B

Paint the whole thing black, then apply the olive drab heavily thinned, with a small needle/nozzle. Build up in the centers of panels, don't avoid but don't linger on panel lines, and don't worry about building up a uniform coat. When you find yourself thinking "just one more pass", STOP. Clear coats and markings will knock down the contrast so the whole coat will appear more uniform and blended than it looks on its own.

Here's the process in action on the HK B-25 I build last fall.

Thanks, DoogsATX.  The proof is in your pictures, I am going to try your method!

Chuck

Glad to help out! I think the key, more than anything, is covering up the gray and starting from a darker base. When it's all dark, you're not as worried about covering up that contrast to the point that you blow it out and cover it up entirely.

How about the bottom of the plane, which is to have a final coat of gray?  Black underneath that, too?  Seems to me that would be ok and accentuate the panel lines nicely.

Yep. The B-25 example there is NMF on the bottom so that doesn't quite hold up, but my teensy MiG-21s got the same treatment:

Mr. Doog do you have a preference for your dark/black paint? I am thinking about enamel, acrylic, gloss, or flat!

If you want panel to panel variation rather than variation between edges and centers of panels, you can use various shades of gray.  Then, make sure the OD is not applied too heavily and you will see the variations between panels.  You can mix various shades of gray by starting with a dark grey and add various amounts of white.  Do some panels with the full dark gray, add a little white, do some more panels, add more white, do some more, etc.

You can also do tonal changes with different greens, browns and so on. A dark green under olive drab will bring out the green tones more, while brown will bring out the browns.

So many choices, so little time!  Thanks, guys!