Hi everyone,
I started building armor and dio.'s, but from time to time I build birds. I find armor more forgiving when it comes to weathering. With the birds it starts off great, cockpit detail, glueing, yeah. But then comes the painting and weathering and this is where I have problems.
1.—Do you birdmen even like to weather your planes?
2.—More specific do you use a darkwash, which I like to do on tanks, or do you like to use pencil, or do you use something different?
3—I’m doing a TBM-3 avenger, right now it’s a flat blue, grey, and white. Should it be a gloss or semi? I ask because the flat has a messed up finish. If the paint is touched it looks scratched even thou it’s not scratched.
Thanks for any help guys and gals.
I like to weather with oils when doing recessed panel lines. I use Grumbach oily black and burnt umber. I put some in a soda cap and add thinner using an eye dropper. When it’s thinned to almost water consistency I use a fine tip paint brush, dip it in the paint and then touch the panel line and let gravity pull the paint along the line. I clean up the excess with a Q tip. I go through quite a few of them. I’ll let the paint sit for a couple of minutes and then go over the lines. Another way is to use a drafting pencil and run the pencil through the lines. You may want to use a small straight edge to keep things straight. I also use pastel chalks for faded looks and soot and grime. The main thing here is you gotta seal the pastels or they’ll come off when you handle the model. There’s also the “sludge” mixture that uses windex, dishwasher detergent and acrylic paints. There was an article in FSM issue a couple of years back that showed how to do this. I’m sure there are folks here in the forum that could provide the ratios and techniques on that or the specific issue.
Your weathering will depend on where the aircraft was used. Avengers were mostly in the Pacific and subject to lots of heat and sun and sand. I’d check references and photos.
As far as the scratched paint, sounds like perhaps the surface had scratches on it before you painted it…possibly? You may want to do some light sanding then use a tack cloth to wipe any sanding dust and repaint just the area the needs retouched.
Hope this helps. Have fun[^]
Thank you very much you have some technigues I will have to try. On the oils, I have considered using them. What kind of thinner should I use, or what do you use. The problem with the paint is after it dryed, about two days, I moved the kit back to the model table. I set it down and later noticed that any area, that was flat colored, that touched would scar. There not scratches it’s more like scuff marks, but only on the flat paint. I used Model Master Enamels.
I like to use pastels and washes to weather my birds. There are other techniques, but they work best for me.
Are you doing the Avenger in the atlantic scheme (Dark grey, light grey, and white)?. Or is it going to be the pacific scheme (dark blue, light blue and white). Either way, the finish should be flat. I don’t like to do mine dead flat, but somewhere between semi-gloss and flat.
hope this helps.
Sorry, your right it’s, light blue not grey. Thanks. I was hoping semi-gloss would be okay because the flat looks really bad. But I always mix enamel’s up wrong when I airbrush anyways. From doing farther reading it sounds like I used to much paint and not enough thinner.[V]
One of my Christmas presents was Doc Obrien’s Weathering Powders…after using them on my P-40 and B-17 for exhaust and cordite stains, I will never go back to my old pastels again…
Jeeves,
Is this something I should look for in the model train section? Thanks for your help.
Hey there.
You can find Doc’s pastels at www.micromark.com
A good way to do a wash on a plane is to paint it the colors, coat it with future after the paint has dried at least 24 hours. let the future then cure for at least 24 hours. Take acrylic paint thinned 10-1 with water and a few drops of dishwashing liquid (this breaks the surface tension of the wash so it can be cleaned up later) or artist oils thinned the same ratio with Minariel (sp) spirits or lacquar thinner (no soap as I havent used soap with this method of oils)
with acrylics after you have the thinned mixture ready to go, using a medium brush stroke it over all the panel lines and let sit a few minutes. Then take a tissue folded or a q-tip soaked in alcohaul (sp) wipe up the excess.
Same for oils but use the spirits or lacq. thinner.
A good reference is here…
www.swannysmodels.com
Hey woodbeck3,
Do you then go back over with a dull coat, and do you like blacks or burnt colors for your dark wash.
I’ve had the same experience with that scratched problem. Did your fine tunning the paint/thinner ratios work? I’m not sure what caused mine. I usually just respray. Try on a scrap model and gloss coat it to see if that makes them disapear.
Speaking of gloss coats, I like to gloss my model before using the oils technique-makes the paint run a bit smoother. I use Gumbach thinner with Gumbach oils. I’ve had my tubes of paint for several years…they last quite a long time.
What Avenger Kit are you doing? I do mostly airliners and European jets…working on a sailing ship…Lindberg Skipjack, Revell DC8 and 1/32 Revell Fulcrum
I use pastels two different methods when weathering my birds, either adding white or yellow to the paints to give then a faded down tone, then use a light grey shade of pastel to tone down it if needed. As for paint chipping I use two different techneques, depending on the wear and tear of the subject.
One is to use a silver ink pen and free hand apply the chipping, or for extreme chipped birds, I coat the subject in Silver as a base coat, apply cammo and decals then rub everything over with an emery board.
Using pastels to highlight the panel lines and to tone down the paint, coated in flat varnish.
Using both white and yellow to fade both the Earth and Green cammo paint, used a silver pen for the chipping effects, coated in DullCoat.
Base coat of silver applied then rubbed back using an emery board,coated in DullCoat
Hope the pix help with the explanations.
Wow this Aircraft forum really moves fast…
bablenw,
It’s the Accruate Miniatures Kit with the radar thingy on the wing. Sorry about my tech talk. I resprayed it and that covers it up good, I just need to handle with care.
Lobbie,
I have been using a silver pencil and that works okay for small chips. But the emery board thing looks great. Very nice work!!! I would guess you would need more than one coat of silver base thou, just to be on the safe side. Yes or no?
-Please be careful when outlining panels. The Avenger in Modeling Warbirds(pg.31) has extremely overdone panels. The gaps he accented would be huge on the real aircraft; big enough for your hand to fit through. An airplane with that big and numeruos gaps won’t fly well if at all.
-My grandfather and I have found that Model Master Acryl can be sprayed straight out of the bottle
-I use dry-brushing, and pastel chalks. Lighter shades of original colors on fabric covered control sufaces.
-The type of finish depends on the subject- fresh from factory:gloss, war weary:flat and sometimes more of the natural metal than paint. example-Japanese aircraft were not primered and tended to show a lot more metal than any other participant of W.W.2
this is just a basic outline and shouldn’t be followed religiously,make sure to check your sources.
Allen
“…and count to 3. No more. No less. 4… is too much…” Priests from Monty Python’s SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL telling of how to use the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch
And 3 it shall be