2014 BRAILLE SCALE (UPDATE)

Hey guys. Here is my Airfix EE Lightning's bottom surfaces in Alclad Airframe alluminium. It will be masked off and the top camo applied.

Duke Maddog

Wayne, that ain't bad on the camo pattern, but yeah, it'll look better under a coat of dirt and mud.  These things got so dirty and muddy that sometimes one could not discern the pattern at all!

and the washes begin.first is PAYNES GRAY sorta medium shade

YELLOW OCHRE

SAP GREEN with a tad of leftover yellow

Great coat of aluminum Theuns.

Wayne, I like what the wash did, looks a lot better, can't wait to see what else you do to it.

Wicket awesome finish on that Lightening, Theuns...gotta get myself on the Alcad thing.

That little tank is coming along very well Wayne...I did my Male a few years back in the simple 'crud' colour, LOL, yours looks fantastic!

Hey guys! Great work & finished builds! Sorry I haven't been posting much. The Hun has the fuselage together with the canopy closed up finally. Used some decals for seat harnesses, which I think works in this scale. Now to get the other parts painted, the decals on and the "fiddly bits" attached!  

Rob Sherman

Wicket awesome finish on that Lightening, Theuns...gotta get myself on the Alcad thing.

That little tank is coming along very well Wayne...I did my Male a few years back in the simple 'crud' colour, LOL, yours looks fantastic!

i agree with the ALCAD thing and i may need to try it on my T2 AHK or HKT. 

had to CYA the track on. weathered it with TAMIYA dark rust followed by black powders. it wouldn't be that rusty but it looks better. i did NOT spray it with mud or dirt. to be realistic the whole thing would be mud. the camo blended much better with the oil washes. it's just sitting on the base so i know there are gaps under the track. if i mount it permanently i will add some LIQUIDTEX, paint it, and press the tank in.

money shot

Looks great Wayne. I think you made a good choice not adding the mud to the tank. shows the actual model off more so than it would if it were muddied up.  I do hope you permanently mount it because it does just look kind of awkward floating on a sea of mud, though it's still a great looking tank. 

Well, there certainly has been some activity here!

Ernest - great finishes there - don't know which is my favourite, but, perhaps the Sherman - i'm really  impressed by the colour modulation. They both turned out beautifully though.

Wayne - that Mark 1 seems to have gone together very nicely for you. I really like how you showed multiple washes too - the photo help to highlight the different tonal variations after each wash. I think i've figured i should do more than a single colour - thanks for posting those pics.

Josiah - no bigger critic than ourselves i think. The Aplha Jet looks good - i probably wouldn't have noticed the canopy if you haven't pointed it out. But hey, for a free kit - it still looks pretty sweet.

Theuns - as Josiah said - nice NMF on that thing!

Wiccan - ah, the ol' decals and fiddly bits stage - one of my less favourite parts of building.

Great updates everybody!

PS: i have made some progress on my builds and will post some pics this weekend - i've been a bit slack due to work and dreaded man flu taking me down for a week or so.

Here is the Lightning. I used Hunbrol dark sea grey enamel, masked it off with PVA and will spay dark green over that. As soon as the green is dry I simply wash off the masking hopefully revealing a nice camo pattern

Awesome tank, Wayne! Great Lightning, Theuns!  

Total epic failure on the PVA masking this time, it did not want to wash off as easly as on the Sabre. The results are that I need to sand down all top coats and see if I can respray it all   :-(

Theuns

Ah Theuns, that's a shame - sorry to hear about that.

Would it be easier just to re-prime with a neutral colour and then do the camo again? Might avoid losing too much detail from sanding.

Sooooooo, i'm calling this one DONE!

Sorry for lack of update pics along the way, we're getting some much needed winter rain here, so i managed to power through and just finish this off today.

Pics aren't the greatest, took them tonight indoors, so they appear a bit yellowish.

Without further ado....

Also, very small update on the Tony

NMF laid, will now start the painful task of brush painting the camo.

Sorry to hear about the mishap Theuns, you'll get it looking real nice though I'm sure of it.

Chris, thanks for the compliments..my dad didn't notice the color of the canopy either so I think I'll just leave it as it is, hanging in the corner of my room.  Yours came out beautifully! and I can't wait to see the camo on that tony

Ah well, it happens sometimes.

That Corsair in desert scheme looks fantastic!

Theuns

Theuns, I'm sorry to hear of the issues. That's why I use Silly Putty for masking my camo patterns. So far, I've had no issues. Hopefully I'll be able to get some pics posted.

Lots of great work going on here. I'm hoping to get into this very soon.

I needed a hard edge camo for this plane and was to lazy to cut out masking for it. I have used the PVA mask very successfully in the past, this time however something went wrong.

Will sand as smooth as I can , in this case the deep Airfix detail actually helps me and then respray.

Theuns

Cheers, thanks for the compliments Josiah, Theuns and Duke!

Well, after a sanding and some re-scribing of lost detail, I have painted the Lightning again. This time I took the lazy man's way out and just free-handed the camo on.

The feathered edges are way to soft, but I was not going to risk another masking misshap.....just cut my losses and complete the build as good as I can.

I hope to do some shading and weathering to try and hide the paint mistakes......stay tuned for pix.

Theuns

Wayne, nice job on the tank!  I have those decals somewhere, I hope mine comes out as well as yours did Chris.  Bummer Theuns, you'll turn it around.

Wayne, I'm changing course.  I still plan on doing the P-26, just not feeling it right now.  Going to do the new Hobby Boss P-38 in OD over gray.

Just got back from another business trip so I'm playing catch-up on the GB:

Theuns - man, sorry to hear about the masking problems on the Lightning.  I've only done a couple of hard edged camo jobs using Silly Putty which worked pretty good.  Sounds like you've worked it all out though!

Wayne - wow, I gotta say the Mark 1 looks awesome!  Great job with the oil washes!  Can't believe how fast you put this one together and got it painted up!

Wiccan - The F100 is coming along nicely! 

Chris - Thanks for the comments on the Sherm & StuG.  I agree, the Sherm is my fave of the two.  Your A-7 came out beautifully!  I really like the Desert Storm camo and markings!  Great job!  As for the Tony...what do you mean by NMF?

I do plan on doing a couple more 1/72 armor kits for the GB, but I have to complete two more builds for another GB first.  I'll jump right back into this GB sometime in September!

Second round of painting.....

Theuns...great cam job..looking forward to picking up this kit myself. 

Nice job on that camo pattern. Very crisp. Looking forward to seeing more.

Lewbud - thanks! Look forward to seeing yours one day.

Ernest - NMF - natural metal finish. According to the instructions, the Tony was all-over natural metal with the splotches over the top.

Theuns - that's some excellent freehand camo. Your edges look super crisp, i wouldn't say they are soft at all. I really like the pre-shading showing through too. Adds that extra dimension.

Thanx for the kind words, but I must admit that I didn't like the edges of my freehand camo so I went over them with a small brush, the shading is also post pastel shading  :-)

I cheated with the camo. The plane for witch the kit supplies decals were either NMF of NMF and top green.

I don't like the green only top, so I went for the standard RAF based camo.  Not strictly correct, but I don't care  LOL

Theuns

Looks good to me Theuns.

I'm not much of a fan of nmf either, always prefer a camo scheme.