Friday, September 30, 2016

Techniques vol.4: weathering with hair spray

                       This is an easy and useful weathering technique.If you want a paint peeling effect on your kit, maybe this will help you. I work with acrylics, but probably this makes no difference.

First you do the base color that will show trough the peeling effect of the technique. I found important to seal the base with a good gloss coat. I like future floor polisher.

Next you need to get a can of hair spray. Buy your own and don't still your wife's one!

Get a good coat of the hair spray over the part you want to weather. I was going to show the wood through the paint on the skid of a piloted V1 flying bomb.

Next a i added the color the is peeling from the subject. In this case a dark grey color.

Next take a brush, dip into warm water and star gently rubbing the paint from the kit part.

Remember to stop just before you thing that you are done. If you think you need, then you can do a little more. If you overdo, you will have to re-start.

Another coat of future will prevent further weathering and protect your work.

A final coat of your favorite mat coat will do the deal. I like Humbrol mat coat.

Bellow i have a few other examples with some color variation two show that it works with several different subjects. I hope you enjoyed it!









Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Techniques vol.3: Re-scribing or drawing on raised panel lines

                 Trough out the many years i have been modelling, the hobby has shown a lot of progress in the area of molding technology and working equipment. Back in 1982, when i started building plastic kits, there was no internet with the thousands of sites devoted to the art of kit construction, there were also no magazines, airbrush was an expensive tool not available to young modelers and aftermarket industry was at best in its infancy. However, it was a great period to become a modeler here in Brazil. Revell kits were being manufacturer here, at a low cost and several new kits were hitting the shelves at our local hobby shops every other week. Aircraft history magazines were becoming available witch made modeling much more interesting. In the next ten years, several new brands were imported and we started to get used to build Tamiya, Hasegawa, Hobbycraft, Italeri and Airfix kits. 
               Several of this new brands soon started to release kits with new molding standards. Perhaps, one of the most important was the introduction of recessed panel lines. An issue that started many intense debates, the recessed panel lines soon became an important condition for modelers to decide what kit they were going to build. New releases of  kits that had previously been available with raised panels indicate the importance of this subject to the industry and the costumers. 
              However, some important subjects remained neglected by the manufacturers trough out all these years. I remember back in 1982 when Revell from Brazil released the 1/48 scale Boeing B-17F. I was excited and got it as soon as it arrived at one of our local hobby shops. It was my first 1/48 scale kit. It was big and, by that time, was a great model. I build it and was pleased with the results. As time passe by, my B-17 became old and quite not up to my modelling standards. I salvaged some parts and the rest became history. Since then, no manufacturer has shown interest in releasing a modern kit of the B-17 in 1/48 scale.
              About a month ago, while visiting the last hobby shop still in business in my hometown, i saw the re-box of the now old Revell B-17F in 1/48 scale. It is the same kit i built back in 1982. Detail is minimal with raised panel lines. However, i decided to re-visit the subject with a new perspective. I was not going to re-scribe  all the panel lines, but i new from the beginning that the key to a good end result was a nice paint job. So i decided to use the technique described bellow. I don't know if anyone has published this before, but it works quite nice and is much simpler than trying to scribe all the panel lines on a 1/48 scale B-17!

First i painted the camouflage. I use a post shading technique, highlighting the central area of the panels with a lighter tone of the basic color

My initial weathering tool is a 0,7 mm pencil available everywhere

Using the raised panel lines for orientation, i draw the structural panels of the kit. I don't worry about precision as this is a weathering technique.

The detail is not overdone as you can imagine looking to close to the kit part. Bellow you have a comparison between the two wings, the left one being the highlighted of course.

I added some increased weathered effect by airbrushing Tamiya smoke along the panel lines. The control surfaces were also weathered by the technique usually used on WW1 aircraft.

The weathering complete just waiting for the mat coat.

Here you have 3 pictures of the completed effect of the technique on the lower fuselage and wings



Now, on the next two pictures, the final effect after highlighting with Tamiya smoke.


The technique works with darker tones too.



Friday, September 23, 2016

Military aircraft vol.81: Boeing B-17F Flying Fortress " Memphis Belle"





Subject:
Boeing B-17F Flying Fortress "Memphis Belle"
Scale:
1/48
Manufacturer:
Revell from Germany
Price
US$40,00 plus shipping
Description
Injected plastic model with  waterslide decals.
Comments
As i said before, this kit has a special place in my heart. It was my first 1/48 scale model ever back in 1982, when i started modelling. By that time, it was impressive. The size of a B-17 in 1/48 is huge and detail was very nice considering what we could get in the Brazilian model market back in the 80's. My original B-17 is long gone now, but recently i saw this kit in our local hobby shop and decided to revisit the subject with a new perspective: more model construction knowledge.
Overall, what you get in the box is less then you would expect from a 1/48 scale four engine bomber considering model technology from today. I tried to do my best, saving most of my efforts on the finishing colors. The real plane was a fortress, and there is nothing that could be seen from the inside anyway. Overall fit is ok. The most difficult task was the wing to fuselage assembling. The weathering technique i used will be presented in an individual article soon. So if you like it, stay tuned.