Wow... I have been away for a week and the GB has really progressed! People have been putting up some very nice work; well done everyone.
I have some progress to share as well. Its been a while, but I think my last post was after priming, and I was debating how to attack the invasion stripes. Well I took the advice of Nathan, Clemens and others, and painted the stripes first, then masking them off to paint the rest of the fuselage.
The stripes (which I didn't photograph pre-taping), were done with Gunze Off-White and Tamiya Nato Black. While spraying the off-white, I also painted the stripes on cowling and vertical stabilizer.
As the photo shows, I followed masking by painting Tamiya Neutral Gray (XF-63) on the undersurfaces. I had done some pre-shading using both the black and white with the leftovers from painting the stripes. That effort, combined with a fairly thin and patchy coat of gray resulted in this:
Next, I rolled some blue-tack to mask the demarcation lines, and put down a base coat of Tamiya Olive Drab (XF-62). I then mixed the base olive with Yellow Green (XF-4... roughly 50/50) and lightened all of the panel centers. Finally, I mixed this lighter shade with Tamiya Buff (XF-57, again roughly 50/50) and further lightened the centers of the panels on the wings and upper surfaces of the fuselage:
Finally, I went over the entire surface with a highly thinned coat of the original olive drab to blend it together. I sprayed the blending coat in a haphazard, somewhat blotchy way to vary the final effect. Here are the results:
There is a spot or two where I had some overspray into the gray that required touch up, but overall I am happy with how the masking went. The whole paint job is begging for some weathering, but that will have to wait. The white is over exposed in the pictures, but there is some subtle darkening around the panel lines there as well.
I have given everything a coat of Aqua Gloss, and will probably give it one more in preparation for decals and panel line washes. Slowly coming together.
Thank for the comments and suggestions (as well as any to come). Thanks also for sharing your work.
Blue