3RD ANNUAL SECRET SANTA GROUP BUILD FOR AIRCRAFT

raider83 wrote:

...And faces are tricky, just gotta keep practicing...

Agreed !   Same here.

Chris

Raider,

So how'd ya do at the county fair ?  I'd say the presentation is very nice.  The model is very nicely built and finished.  The base and the accessories are a nice touch.  So is the face on the bomb.  I gotta disagree with you about it being too weathered though.  I've seen some WWII carrier photos that show some mighty whooped A/C.  It doesn't seem overdone to me.  Very nice !

I almost missed that little guy that only shows up in the last photo.  Since you asked about making the figures more realistic... A couple things you can still do: tone down the blue shirts with some grey wash - or just something to make them a little less "neon" blue.  You did a decent job of making the folds a little darker - that looks nice.  I usually add a very little bit of red to the flesh tone paint and use it very sparingly in spots on the people's faces just to make the skin look less uniform in color.  That seems to help a bit.  Just some suggestions.

Chris

Here is my Dauntless, courtesy of Aggieman for the Secret Santa GB. Thank you again Aggieman, it was a fun one. The kit was not bad. The cockpit is fantastic, as are all the other cockpits from Accurate Miniatures. Fit was alright. The wing roots were a bit tricky. Everything else went fine. I wanted to make this plane look old and beat up but i think I overdid it....US Navy carrier planes usually didn't get this dirty or chipped. And speaking of chips, I tried the salt chipping technique with sand. That didn't go over so well, so I painted on aluminum chips with enamel paint. But I forgot the turpenoid in my oil wash dilutes enamels, so the chips are kinda streaky." border="0" width="30" height="20" />. The figures and vehicles are from AM's set of ordnance and such. I know the figures look like toys. I need to work on that. Please feel free to leave any comments or criticisms.  Merry Christmas!....in August.

A little more progress lately...

The base coats of the camo pattern are down and now I'm working on "fuzzifying" the edges between the colors. 

 ***edit***

Here's an in-progress photo showing the method I use for making the fuzzy edged camo pattern.  After painting the base camo colors with a plain hard edge, I go over the intersection of the two colors with a ~50/50 mix of the two colors.  A very fine brush is used to make a line ~1/16" wide.

After this I'll go back and blend a light wash of the 100% solid colors into the 50/50 area.  The two greens are so close in color that I might not even use the wash between those two.  They look pretty fuzzified already.

Chris

Lookin good Dave,

That's gonna be some greenhouse !

Chris 

Nice progress Dave, I am wrapping up a GB in the next day or so and then I will be starting my JU-88. Im a littlle behind on getting started but I will get it done. I think its all Daves fault. HAHA Dave thats not confined to the RA GB, its spreading.

Steve

Some great looking work guys.

Update on the CA 311.  One thing I love about the old Italeri kits is all the clean up of the excessive ejector pin marks! 

Here's the oob office.  Not bad detail for its day but I think I'll have to jazz it up a bit.

For the last few months I've been busy finishing up 3 other builds that were started last year.  They're all done, so now I can devote some time to the kits that Zip gifted me with in this GB. 

I ran into my first snag with the fit of the Phantom.  It wasn't that big a deal - an easy fix.  The intakes are really tricky on the Phantom.  I bet they're an engineering nightmare for a mold designer.  The geometry is pretty complex.  In order to make it fit on all the other surfaces at the same time, I needed to leave a gap at the bottom.  I figured this would be the easiest gap to fill, and I'm pretty sure I was right.

I trimmed a piece of 0.010" thick styrene sheet to fit the interior curve of the intake and pushed it in so that it was flush on the inside and glued it in place with liquid glue from the outside.  I left some of the sheet sticking out, and then after the glue dried I just trimmed it with an exacto and sanded it flush. 

The same operation was performed on the starboard side, but it took a thicker 0.030" sheet.  Lucky for me these are the only two thicknesses of sheet I have on hand - and they were just the ticket !  I really like it when that happens.

After painting I doubt it will be noticed.

Model On my yuletide friends !

Chris

Im calling this one done for now. White is such a pain to paint and all was going well untill i had to touch up the crosses, i did the rest of the white with my airbrush and the touch ups by hand:

Im ashamed to say i cant remember now who sent this to me. 

Azgaron:

Hows the kit i sent you coming on?

Very nice work.  No shortage of armament there !

Nice photos too !

Chris

Very nice and clean build.

Great work!

Here it is.  My secret Santa Gift (Hawker Typhoon Mk.1B) from Raptordriver.  This was fun build.  This took me a while due to working two jobs.  By the end of the year I should be able to only have one job, which will enable me to build more.  Well here are some pics.  Comments and suggestions are always welcome.  Now I am off to finish up my F-18.

Hey thanks everyone! Yes I painted the white areas except for the tail.

IT'S FINALLY DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Put the last finishing touches on the Typhoon.  I will shoot my pics this weekend and post them.  This was fun.  Now I am off to my next project. 

Thanks again raptordriver and great job on the Spitfire.  Did you paint the white areas or are they decals?

By my rough calculations - Our friend Mike "Swingr1121" is now a married man !

Hmmmm....   seems that screen name is...   shall we say - outdated ?

Congrats Man !

Chris

Andrew- Your Spitfire looks great! Very nice.

Steven- Great work on both of those! Your weathering is top notch. I like the way you did the red star over the US star.

Chris- That Phantom will look great when it's all done. Very nice work.

Thanks again Steve.

Here she is - a little more "dressed up".  I finished the main striping decals because I figured I had to get them on to paint right up to their edge. I wasn't really sure where the inner edge of the wingtip decals ended until I got them on the plane. 

After the decals were on, I had to paint around the edges where the decal ends at the leading and trailing edges of the wings and fin.  Dark sea blue and insignia red were both very good matches for the decal colors.  The dark sea blue is just a wee bit darker than the decal - but it's tough to see the difference even in really good lighting.  I'm pretty pleased with the way they turned out.  The rest of the decals should be a piece of cake compared to these.

Chris

 Hey Chris,

 It takes a while to get the hang of the airbrush. Once you get comfortable with it though you'll love it.

 As far as the P-38 goes it's got to be the finest kit I've ever owned. Jeff gave me one of the best 1/32 kits out there plus the book and the Big Ed set of PE for it. I don't want to mess this one up. I will have to hone my skills alittle more before I tackle this bad boy. All schemes call for a NMF. I've only done one of those so far and that was on a 1/48 Mustang. A lot more surface on the P-38. I want to do it right.

 I reallty enjoy watching your builds.

 BTW I use just a couple drops of just plain water to thin my MM acrylics. Never a problem. Just don't over do it. Experiment.

Zip

Zip,

Hey Man !   Good to hear from ya.  I've joined the ranks of those that own an airbrush - and my wife got me a compressor for Christmas this past year - but I still do quite a bit of brush painting.  Right now I'm using the airbrush for painting white (like on the F4 underside)  You can see a little overspray in the topside photo.   The Sand color is brush painted.

Honestly, I'm having a hard time with the airbrush.  I'm using MM acrylics with MM acrylic thinner and it's not working out as easily as I had hoped.  I started out just thinning the paint a little - but it clogged the nozzle very quickly.  When I use more thinner, it seems to take a really long time to dry, even with really light coats - and still the nozzle clogs up (at a slower rate).  It gives me MUCH better results than I could ever get brush painting with white - but it's a hassle unclogging and cleaning everything multiple times throughout a painting session.

I need to do more research in the airbrushing part of the forum to see if there are better ways to get acrylics to go on more easily.  I've heard of people using other thinning agents for acrylics.

Just this morning I laid down a coat of future on the white tail and wingtips on the F4 in preparation for the red white and blue striped decals. 

Have you cracked open that monster P-38 yet ?  Looking forward to seeing that one.

Chris

 Yes Steven outstanding!!!!

 Chris your doing an excellent job buddy! If remember correctly don't you hand brush your models?

Zip

Very nice weathering work Steven.  Man you're quick !  Very nice builds.

Chris

Nice job on the Spitfire!

On Saturday we had one heckuva storm, so water-logged as we were, I was given time to spend at the bench.  I put in a bunch of hours at the bench, and was able to go through the DVD of Enemy at the Gates and then Empire of the Sun, which played twice, before I was done for the day.  In other words, I made considerable progress which I then completed tonight after work. 

I did really enjoy both of these kits but the Eduard P-39 blew the Trumpeter out of the water.  This was my second Trumpy kit and I have been generally ho-hum about their offerings.  Decent kits to be sure but a bit too heavy on rivet detail and some unusual pieces where one might not expect to find a separate piece.  On the MiG the intake scoops located on the wing fairings were separate pieces, and they took a bit of fidgety work to get them aligned properly.

The MiG is painted with Tamiya flat white topside and Tamiya Sky Blue heavily mixed with Tamiya flat white to make it more North Carolina Tar Heel blue-like for the underside.  Model Master metallics for exhaust staining, machine guns and exhaust pipes.

The P-39 is painted with Model Master acrylics - olive drab upper and neutral gray under.  I put on US insignia and over sprayed them with MM green drab, along with the MM metallics mentioned above for the machine guns and exhaust pipes.

Mixed burnt umber for a wash and applied Tamiya weathering pigments, and called it a day on these builds. 

MiG-3

P-39Q

Edit:  Just noticed in looking at the photos up close of the MiG that I have not attached the lens covering the wing light, nor the wing tip light pieces.  Oops, not quite done yet!

Andrew - nice job ! I like the looks of that clipped wing Spitfire - nice job on the camo and decals - very smooth !

Thanks Dave !

Chris

Chris, nice looking progress on the F4.  Sure is a nice looking kit! 

Andrew, that is one sweet looking spitfire and you said you built it in three days!!!   Incredible