My son caught me completely by surprise this morning by asking if he could help me the next time I sat down to do some model building. I’ve been hoping he would show some interest, but I haven’t wanted to push it on him. I want it to be something he’s genuinely interested in and not something he feels like his dad is forcing on him. So of course I said yes. I have really good memories of sitting down with my dad and watching while he worked on his armor kits. In fact that’s how I really got interested in building kits of my own. Anyway, I had a cheap Testor’s Corsair kit that I picked up at our local Michaels arts and crafts store for about six dollars. It’s really a pretty crummy little kit, but I figured I would just use it to practice some painting and weathering techniques on. I let him do pretty much all the work after showing him how to carefully clip the parts from the sprues and how to use liquid cement without getting it all over everything. I think he did a pretty good job, but I’m probably a little biased. And I told him I’d put some pictures up on the internets, so here’s my son’s first foray into the world of plastic models:
Here’s the basic fuselage/wing assembly with a coat of paint. As soon as he saw the airbrush in action he had to try it for himself, so I said what the heck. I got it started and then kind of coached him through it. It doesn’t show up so good here but the paint job is a little spotty in places, and you can see the larger splotches on the left wing. But for a first try I think he did pretty good. I think if we go over it again with another coat we can probably fix it up ok. One thing surprised me: If you’ve ever seen those Scale Workshop videos that Testor puts up, my son instinctively held the airbrush the same way Brett Green does in those videos, pressing the button with his thumb rather than his index finger.
Looks like a Corsair to me! That’s interesting how he holds the brush… kinda weird style, y’know? But, if it works for him, that’s great. I remember my first try at an airbrush… I gave up LOL. Tell your boy he did a good job!
