Hi all,
What is the best way to achieve that faded/ worn look of olive drab on aircraft, I know that you can paint selected panels a lighter shade and also use pastels on the panels, but I’m intrested in what you guys do. Can anyone give me tips on how to spray a “buff” coat over the OD, I think its OD tinted with white and yellow, what mix ratio should I try?
Thanks all!
I usually lighten the base color with a few drops of white but you might want to try some different combinations on a scrap piece of plastic first. Also apply some panel line washes or even post shading with Tamiya X-19 on your test piece. I have two old wing panels on my desk that are used to try these kinds of things out before it gets done on a model. Sorry I couldn’t be more help.
I personally like pastels ground into the dullcoat with a qtip. I’ve been too chicken to try the white paint, but I might venture forth on the next OD project.
I working on an all black Hurricane, so I’m faced with the same problem, how do you make something that monochrome interesting?
I ended up applying a base coat of the main colour over the entire airframe.
I then added about 10% tyre black to the base colour and gently faded in all the panel lines.
I then cut the base colour with about 10% white, and shaded the centre of each panel to give a lightly faded look.
The trick is to take your time, and try and produce a graduated colour transition from the centre of each panel to the edge.
Sounds difficult…
… it can’t be I do it.
Best of luck
Karl
That’s some good advice, but I like to lighten my base colors with alight tan or grey. White is too stark an option and doesn’t look natural.
Since your night fighter Hurricane would have been painted in the British color “NIght,” it would contain a certain percentage of medium blue with the black pigment. (Humbrol markets Night.) For an after the fact touch up, mix the blue and black about equally and make it thin, then brush it on the light-catching, highlight areas (the places that stick up). The blue will show in the light ever so slightly, and will add interest to the black. I’ve never seen a highlighting technique using a dark gray or other lighter color on all-black planes that didn’t look artificial.
Unforunately, if you stand next to a real F-117 on the sunniest day of the year, the black is still so…well, BLACK, it looks like it’ll swallow you, and you can’t even see the details on the real thing. The best thing to do on all-black planes is to make the mst use of every non-black stencil and small non-black partsyou can find, and then use the old chipping technique with silver or green primer.
Best of luck,
TOM
Tom, I was going to go with RAF ‘Night’, but this bird was painted in early 1940, and so was actually a matt black rather than the later ‘Night’ shade.
As it was I didn’t paint it black but a mix of RLM66 and Tyre Black, see photo below:
…which bizarrely means it has a bluish tint anyway!
Karl
Use the Model Master Nº 2051 enamel… It is Faded Olive Drab…
There was a good article in an FSM about doing faded OD for a CBI mustang!
I use Tamiya OD green for my birds. I lighten the “fading” color with Tamiya Yellow-Green XF-4. I usually do three or four successively lighter shades. It’s easy to pull off in one sitting, just add the yellow-green as you empty your color cup. I find this to look a little more subtle that lightening with straight white. Experimentation is recommended.
Forgive me, I got distracted and missed the original question. The “Color of Eagles” line of acrylics in the squirt bottles has become my favorite line of paint (I’m told it’s relabeled Vallejo(?) paint, but don’t know for sure). Anyway, it’s available from Eagle Strike (I think I’m the last person to discover it, as usual) and has a pre-faded OD that is outstanding in every way. These paints are pre-thinned for airbrushing, but hand-brush on perfectly.
Karl, you have a lovely Hurricane, and certainly needed no advice from anyone. I wish I could get that effect.
TOM
well sometimes you get the results you want by accident and as for the faded OD look I agree you can use MM Faded OD I use it all the time on my WWII US armour models and I’m planning to eventually use it on my Monogram B-17G. But also FSM did an article on how to achieve a faded look by using pastel chalks.
Several articles I have read, suggests that adding white to a color will give you a scale effect to the paint. Makes it look like it would if you were looking from adistance. A paint manufacturer I have used, suggests lightening OD with khaki, and darkening with a dark green.
I, too, use olive green khaki, or occasionally shades of gray – almost never white – to lighten OD, especially in cases where it has to be lightened gradually, from light at the peaks where the sun hits it most directly and most often, and less as you go down the sides and in the “valleys” such as where the flying and tail surfaces meet the fuselage.
TOM