Thanks Joe
This weeks update... things slowed down a bit this week, partly due to being distracted with other non-modelling things. My girlfriend is coming over from Portugal this coming week for her first visit since I moved into the new house, so I've been "spring" cleaning and managed to almost do my back in moving the couch in the lounge! Oh well, its a good excuse to be sitting not moving about much lol. I'll have ot move all the paints etc into the shed when she's here as she has this silly thing about smelling paints, solvents and sundry chemicals. Very fussy!
So what about the model I hear you ask? Welll this was the week where the wings went on. The problem was the wing cord of the wings was much deeper than that of the fuselage joints! So this required a careful build up of the complex curve. First was to fill the coarse gaps with Mr Dissolved putty:
This was left overnight to dry out. Then a layer of squadron white putty went over the top and again was left overnight to dry out. This was then carefully sanded down, trying to keep the complex curves smooth. A bit more filling and sanding left a reasonable surface. To smooth the whole lot off, a coat of Mr Surfacer 500 was painted over the joints and again left overnight
The final stage was to sand this down and get a nice smooth finish:
It was while taking that last photo that I realised I was dumb and had prayed silver in the wheel wells instead of cocpit green as I originally planned as this was common on later Hurricanes. I'm happy with the wing joints now - I thought it would be harder to get a good joint, but it just took patience!
In other news, work continued on the propeller:
I've tried to represent a faded yellow tip using a mis of yellow and dark yellow. I painted the spinner metallic grey, then dabbed a few spots of masking fluid in streaks. Then once the tips were masked, I sprayed it with Nato Black. Next day, I peeled off the masking fluid then using a piece of kitchen towel polished up the matt finish to a more satin look.
In the background you can see the resin exhausts painted up but not yet weathered. All the while other bits were drying I continued on the figure to represent my dad. Hiw uniform was painted in XF 49 Khaki and exposed skin given a once over with some flash -coloured paint. A oil wash with burnt ochre was then applied and it was left for a day:
I then started on the head. Now I've not been very good with heads in the past so I looked up some tutorials on how to paint heads in 1:35 (although this is 1:32 of course!) and found a very good one on Missing Lynx which I'm following. Here is how the head looked after the first session - please excuse it being so dark - its bloody hard to photograph this thing without it being totally washed out with the camera flash!
The big downside with oil paints is of course the drying time! I hed to leave things alone for several days then came back to
touch things up again with some more oil wash to accentuate the shadows better:
The face in this looks a bit "Black and White Minstrels" because the light seems to have picked up lighter areas around the eyes which are not all that obvious when you view it live. I've quite pleased with how this look. Sadly it doesn't really look much like my dad, but I guess thats asking perhaps a bit to much.
What else? Lots of spare time to work on other bits and bobs like the cockpit canopy, which got masked up insid and out and painted. I'm using the canopy that came with the kit rather than the vac formed one I bought. The kit one is not bad, with nice moulded frame detail.
I saw a mention of Value Gear on a forum this week and that reminded me I had picked up 3 sets at SMW so I had a look through the various piece and found some that might work in this context.
These are several crates with some tarp aor tents over the top. I gave the crates and initial coat of buff, then overpainted roughly with red brown to give the wood some colour variation
The tarps got painted khaki drab and one in Khaki, with the straps being painted a variety of colours from lenoleum brown to buff to desert yellow to give the straps some variation. Then an oil wash was applied to accentuate the creases etc.
In the background you can also see the landing gear which was also given its initial silver and metallic gray colours. Unphotographed as yet, the tool box got sprayed silver, then given a coat of hairspray. Once all this has dried it'll be painted blue and then chipped/worn.
I've got a few more days this week before the GF arrives, then I'll be preoccupied for a week before I can return to the solvents and paint smells