And when I say clean, I mean clean. This aircraft is supposed to appear as though it JUST got painted. It has a commerative paint scheme and it is very clean. With that in mind, I have two questions.
First, I want this aircraft to have a fair amount of gloss. However, Future as the last coat is a bit too rough. Kinda beady looking. Can I coat this with Testors gloss to get rid of that? Or, would semi-gloss be more accurate.
Secondly, even though this aircraft is clean, It needs a wash of some kind to bring out the features. The aircraft is mosly yellow. Should I just use a dirty yellow color for a wash?
Thanks.
I have seen aircraft roll out ot the paint barn and you can not see any panel lines at all. The paint kind of seals the panels and they become almost invisible. If you have recessed panel lines maybe just a little darker yellow to trace the panels. If it has raised lines, paint a darker color as a precoat. Lightly sand the top coat untill you can see the different color. Not too much to make it really stand out but enough to see the pamel lines. That would be all of the weathering you would need.
Have you tried buffing Future after it has been applied? If you lay it on too thick it will give the beady look. Apply light coats and buff out the last coat with ultra fine sandpaper. Follow up with a soft cloth moistned with Future. It should bring back the luster lost during sanding.
As Berny mentioned, most aircraft when they come out of the paint barn show very little panel detail. Below is an F-15C that was pulled out of the paint barn and towed to the ramp for the airshow. It has a semi-gloss sheen to it and there was not a mark on it. For your project you may just want to put a wash on the gear struts and wheels. IMHO straight future or any gloss is to shiny for any scale model, including airliners. Hope this helps.
Even on a clean model (god forbid I ever build one) I will try to enhance details and panel lines, this is simply because I don’t want the end result to look toylike and unconvincing, I want to creat artificial shadows and textures because in my opinion there needs to be a little bit more than a uniform even colour.
Although the F-15 above is the real thing, it looks like a toy, and this is what I want to avoid in model form. If I was to build a model of it I would enhance the panel lines and create shadows and textures, because to me, it looks better.
I’d recommend doing the panel lines just the way you would any other project. To me, the panel lines on models or real aircraft don’t say “Dirty” they say “Here’s where the panels are.” Of course, the lines may be disruptive to the pattern of your commemorative scheme, but if not, I’d just do the panel lines the same way as usual. Of course, the problem is, if it looks bad, it would be hard to correct. Maybe you could wether on side or on section with some pastel dust, and then clean it off, and redo the weathering on the whole model if the panel lines worked with the design.