Luftwaffe Mottle Help

jwb wrote:

While certainly not wanting to contradict Tom's methods , I'd thought about something as simple as a notecard. Cut a small hole in it, near the center, and hold it over the model. Airbrush the card, some paint slips through, and you get a small dot with a fuzzy edge. You just keep moving the card around, building up different patterns. You probably would have to change cards, but it would be a cheap and simple thing to try. Probably could use pieces of the kit box. Never tried it, but I swear I read it in an article in FSM.

That's the way I did it many, many years ago. It does work, just have to play with distance from the subject to get it just right.

I also see that you can now buy pre-cut mottle and splinter masks.

-dave

jwb wrote:

While certainly not wanting to contradict Tom's methods , I'd thought about something as simple as a notecard. Cut a small hole in it, near the center, and hold it over the model. Airbrush the card, some paint slips through, and you get a small dot with a fuzzy edge. You just keep moving the card around, building up different patterns. You probably would have to change cards, but it would be a cheap and simple thing to try. Probably could use pieces of the kit box. Never tried it, but I swear I read it in an article in FSM.

I'm actually going to try that technique on my 1/48 Me-109E-7 (about 70% complete).  I was planning using several cards so there wouldn't be a patter, and put randomly shaped and sized holes in the cards.  I'll hold the cards a bit away from the surface, which should make for a nice fuzzy edge. 

While certainly not wanting to contradict Tom's methods , I'd thought about something as simple as a notecard. Cut a small hole in it, near the center, and hold it over the model. Airbrush the card, some paint slips through, and you get a small dot with a fuzzy edge. You just keep moving the card around, building up different patterns. You probably would have to change cards, but it would be a cheap and simple thing to try.

Probably could use pieces of the kit box.

Never tried it, but I swear I read it in an article in FSM.

Hi Zomok,
there is an easy way to do this although it might be considered cheating - brass etch paint masks. Both Eduard and Airwaves make them in all the usual scales. Airwaves do a generic 1/72 one, part number AEMM501 or something close to that and Hannants have it at £3.99 at the moment.

Regards
Paul

With the direction you seem to be going, since you are using a non-toxic acrylic; you might try one of these techniques:

1. Siphoning the color you want with a soda straw, put the filled straw up to your mouth and have someone tell you a bad joke, so you spray it out in blotches all over the model in question. The trouble with this method is that you have to do it more then once for each side you need to paint, and you can get overlapping mottles.
2. If that doesn't work, you can make tiny slippers for your pet centipede, and have him dip his tiny feet in the paint, and have him walk all over your subject. The trouble with this method is now and then your pet might slip and simply smear the paint, and may not be patient about the occasional renewing of the paint on his tiny slippers.
3. Otherwise you can try making a template out of some of the masking film they sell these days, lay it down on the subject and paint over the irregular holes you have carved into it. With this method, either bristle or air brushing can be used.

In any case, you can always paint over the excess blotches with the other colors you want the plane to be.

Other then the above, I dunno

  Tom T