I've made some progress on the Hellcat and Bolt. First the Hellcat, I am painting the tri-color scheme, working from the bottom up first applied is Insignia white:
Next up is the intermediate blue. Here I'm trying to make a soft transition line:
and finally the sea blue on top:
Now the decaling begins...
As for the Thunderbolt, I am doing a natural metal finish, with a yellow cowl, a OD green strip across the top and red and black stripes on the tail. I didn't want to first spray the aluminum and then have to mask it all off, with the prospect of lifting off that aluminum finish. In short I wanted to handle the NMF paint as little as possible.
So to that end I painted the "colors" first and then mask those and apply the NMF.
First the cowling and tail:
then the cockpit and unit stripes:
Now to mask those colors:
Now onto the NMF. Now, I have head that painting a gloss black sub surface will give the NMF a real nice seen. So I tried it by applying testors gloss black under coat (for color change) from an aerosol spray can. The results were not what I was expecting. It went on THICK. Like black tar. See here:
While I was thinking about what to do with that thick black paint. I experimented with an aluminum (again from an aerosol can) on the fuel tank and landing gear doors over that gloss black:
So far it looks promising. Back to the airframe. So I thought I would give the model a light sanding with some 000 steel wool to try and knock down the high spots where the paint oozed to. I was afraid of what would happen if I sprayed the Aluminum onto the sanded gloss so I set it aside and tried an experiment.
I was looking to see which aluminum I would use. Now, I have heard good things about Alclad but have no experience with it. In my experiment I sprayed that black gloss over a sheet of styrene. About half of which I rubbed it down with the steel wool. Then I masked off most of the sheet exposing a small section and resprayed the Aluminum I used on the gas tank. Well that paint crazed, like, a well, crazy. In fact each aluminum I sprayed onto the sanded area crazed, but not on the unsanded areas. So what to do about the airframe?
Obviously, I have to respray the gloss, but not out of that spray can. So I decanted it and put through my airbrush where I can better control the flow and amount applied. With the gloss back, I chose my aluminum (yes, from a spray can). But wait. If I can decant the black I can decant the aluminum! So here it is after the aluminum was sprayed:
It does have a shine to it. And now after removing the masked "colored" areas:
There are a couple of areas to touch up, but all in all I am not too disappointed in the outcome. And, you might have noticed the .50 calibers are missing from the wings. I ended up breaking one off (as I knew I would) so I chose to remove them until the end and readd some better ones (better ones I hope).