I’ve seen pics of the modern navy a/c and the coloring is really mottled or worn from the effects of wear and tear and salt air. Any ideas on how best to model this? I’m biliding the Academy F/A-18 in 1/32 and would really like to capture this effect.
Any comments or suggestions would be really appreciated.
Cheers,
Paul
That mottling you see is actually spot priming for corrosion control. You can replicate this by first cutting your base coat with about 20% white to lighten it down and then radomly overpraying small blotches of straight color to simulate the spot priming. It’s best to have a picture at hand so you’ll know where to place the blotches. Also, a dual action AB works best for this as you really need to get tight edges. If you don’t have a dual action, you can clean up the edges with a brush dipped in a little thinner and grag it along the edge to get rid of spatter. I’ve seen some photos where FS36375 has been oversprayed on the topside color and this really makes for an interesting looking airplane, particularly if the topside color is FS35237 on a Tomcat. Hope this helps.
Hi Paul,
Here’s an article that was included in a thread a couple days ago that concerned this… (neat pictures too!) [:)]
http://www.cf-18.com/tech3.htm
Take care,
Frank
You could try using chalk pastels. They come in heaps of colours, and are easy to apply. The best thing is, if you don’t like the effect, just wash it off.
HTH
Hey, bstrump and pingtang…haven’t I seen you two in another thread here on the FSM forums?
Here’s my partially painted 1/48 F-14 that I’m building for a group build. Below the photo I’ll explain my method.
I first pre-shaded the panel lines with an “almost black” grey, a very very dark grey. Then I sprayed the overall top color, Dark Ghost Grey (don’t remember FS number), being careful to avoid painting over the pre-shades too heavily. Once I had everything covered fairly well, I poured out most of the paint in my color cup. I then added a few drops of black, mixed well, then sprayed a few random areas to replicate the spot priming that occurs whilst at sea.
Next I mixed in a bit of white, then sprayed a few random areas. Then I added some blue, sprayed some more random areas. Then I dumped that out and started with Light Ghost Grey…same procedure over and over until I had 15 or so colors on the top of the model.
As you can see, it’s far from being finished. I’ve since mated the rear and forward sections of the fuselage, the wings and vertical stabs are ready for painting, in fact I’m about 20 minute from painting now. Gotta go!
Also, look at a lot of reference pics!! Here’s a good site for F-14’s, take a look at a lot of the photos and you’ll get an idea of what you want to replicate.
Nope. Never.[:D]
Paul, here’s two photos of my F-14 I recently finished that I forgot to include in my original post. The technique I described is used on this model. No pre-shading. Just blotching and a wash.
To everyone…
These are really great suggestions. I am looking forward to incorporating them into my build. It seems that some a/c look pretty clean, while others have had a lot of patching done. The differences are pretty dramatic.
Thanks,
Paul