Being new to aircraft model building, I am still learning some techniques. I see most of the newer kits have recessed panel lines, which are easy to accent with washes. There are still a lot of older kits with raised panel lines that are worth building. So, my question is: how do you accent the raised panel lines? Just putting a wash on them the typical way would leave the raised line uncovered with wash paint and just adjacent to it, both sides of the raised line would have the wash paint. Seems that would look unrealistic.
I’ve dealt with them in a couple of different ways, depending on what kind of a finish I’m looking for. If I’m going for a cleaner look, I’ll rub the side of a pencil on them gently until I get the look I want. If you make a mistake you can erase it with a good quality eraser. If I’m going for dirty, I’ll use pastel chalk and a soft brush. This takes some trial and error, but mistakes can still be cleaned up with a “need-it” gummy eraser. And you’re right, there are some very nice kits out there with raised panel lines, and in some cases they are more accurate than recessed panels like on planes with overlapping panels.
When I finally decided to build my old Hasegawa 32nd P-51D, which had the raised details, I started to completely remove the bits with a tool designed for that. Name on the tool is “Micro Mark,” I think I ordered it from their hobby website, it works pretty well. I also found with careful placement of the blade, a curved X-acto blade does OK.
As I struggled to remove the details without gouging the surrounding surface, I realized not all of the details have to be removed 100%. If just the tiniest bit remains after planing it can easily be finished with sanding, which you would do anyway to prep for painting.
In the case of convex curved areas there seems no other choice, it’s sanding only, but there weren’t so many of those surfaces and it went fast. Once I got on a roll, the kit only required about 2 hours for removal of all of the raised details. There is a lot of surface area on that bugger, I got well acquainted with all of it.
Washes still work well on raised panel lines. I apply them in the same manners as recessed lines. When removing excess wash, I tend to go light on the pressure of cotton swabs and paper towels so I do not wipe away as much wash.
Preshading can help here as well as post shading to accent the panel lines. I sometimes also do a reverse preshade on raised panel lines by applying a dark color on the panel lines after the main color was applied. I will highly thin the paint, 70/30 thinner to paint and build up the color on the panel lines very slowly. Usually 7-8 PSI on the airbrush and a super fine tip.
I dont use black, I will usually take the base color I applied and darken it approx 50-70% darker.