had issues toward the end of this build that left me a little dissatisfied with my self.
the main question reguarding weathering has to do with gloss black area, how do you go about weathering it for realism. had issues with washes also not going into panel lines, think paint and gloss coat may have been to heavy handed.
for reference this is 1/48 hasegawa kit. got frustrated with it at this point and stuck it on the finished shelf, even though not finished, no final flat coat. over all not a complete fail but want to do better in future.
some these older hasegawa kits need to have the panel lines deepened before you paint them. Also, try post shading the black with a dark gray and a light gray wash.
i was thinking something along those lines, i purchased a italeri f-18f for my next victim. a lot cheaper kit than this one to practice my technique on. have not started that yet. currently, have a 1/72 f-15c on the bench working on learning the black basing technique. picked the kit up on the cheap so if not happy no great loss. so brings me to another idea. if doing a cag bird, for the black area if you put down a dark grey base coat and then the the black kind of marbling it if that would help hum?
Not at all a bad idea…I’d reverse it though…lay down the black (more of a very dark grey/almost black), then lighten that just a touch and “marble” away!
Also, the gloss colors don’t weather the same as flat colors, so they are not going to show much. As an example…this was the CAG plane for my brothers squadron, when they were in Japan a few years ago…
Pretty clean airplane! I’m sure, up close, you’d be able to see more variation in the grey. My bro said the black was CLEAN. Then again, that was a fairly new-ish paintjob at the time.
thats kinda what i was thinking, looking at your picture seems fairly typical for cag’s. so would you weather the rest of the plane as normal, or do the cag birds get extra attention?
I’ll be honest with ya, Dave. The way your Hornet turned out looked pretty good! I recently picked up the Revell F/A-18F Super Hornet with the flashy markings for VX-23 out of Pax Naval Air Station. At first, I was wondering how I should tackle the weathering but then it got me to thinking that aircraft with those special markings (CAG birds included) are usually well maintained. As a result, I’m going to make my craft very clean like yours.
After viewing many pictures on-line of the actual plane depicted on the cover, I realized you don’t see any fading or weathering of any sort. So don’t be too hard on yourself or disappointed in the results you achieved. I think it’s spot on and I wouldn’t change a thing.
i have some work to do on my skills. currently have a hobby boss f-14d in the stash high expectations for. gonna work on some cheaper kits first before i tackle it though.
I’m coming in a bit late, but something I believe nobody has mentioned is the glossy paint vs. the standard Navy a/c paint.
The ghost grays stain readily and those stains are very hard to clean. CAG bird gloss will wash clean just like a car’s paint will.
I’ve seen CAG birds look good on the colors, but still have a fair amount of weathering on the standard paint.
Another thing, one technique I’ve had success with on panal lines in dark colors is to use a light gray artist pencil. Move the sharpened pencil point into the panal lines. The effect can be subtle, but can separate panal lines from the background color.
