Maginot

yes, a bit different. Very nicely modelled.

Looks great.

Super job!

She's a beaut! Well done.

The best part about modelling figures is drinking heaps of red wine and saving the corks to use as bases. Nice work, I reckon.

Very nice work. Colour scheme is excellent.

Hello @planecrazee aka Kris. The acrylic retarder is by Atelier, an Australian company. So far, it works fine with Tamiya acrylics. I'll be trying it with other acrylic brands, such as the apparently fussy Lifecolor. I tried Atelier after reading that a modeller in the UK was using Winsor & Newton retarder that worked well with modellers acrylics, so I think it's worth experimenting with other brands, too. It's an economical way to go. For twice the price, you get 6 times the retarder, though this may be a false economy considering the tiny amount used in each application. I've got my eye on other products from the artist suppliers to try, including clear varnishes in rattle cans used for sealing artworks. These come in glossy, satin and matt.

Wow!

Brush painting; experiment I Having a weekend away in the hills with native wildflowers, birds and lots of roos. Very peaceful. Brought my project with me. I laid a coat of primer onto a softdrink bottle, drew up and painted a facsimile Škoda camouflage pattern. Some observations: Scanned the web for info on brush painting acrylics. I'm comfortable brushing enamels, but have had limited success with acrylics in the past. There are some good brushing resources on this forum and across the web. I found @PlaStix posts and video particularly interesting, although the Škoda painting challenge is a little different, being an array of small splodges (scuse technical jargon). Following Stix's technique, I used a china plate as a palette (finest bone china from the op shop if you don't mind!). On this I was able to i) daub a working amount of paint and close the lid on the paint jar immediately (thereby keeping contents in A1 nick); ii) mix paint with a drop of retarder; iii) and by keeping it tilted, pool an amount of distilled water at the other end of the plate ready to mix with the paint for thinning, to stop it drying and to unload the brush of paint. Try flat and round head brushes. The acrylic paint retarder is from an artist supplies shop. No more than 10% by volume should be added to paint. It helps make a viscous solution, certainly slows down drying and seems to help with leveling. Best to leave the painted work overnight to dry when using this retarder. Some paint was still sticky 6 hours after application. Before applying a second coat, leave the work overnight. As you can see from the test piece, I spoiled the finish of the first coat in places by being impatient and applying a second coat before the first was fully dry. The drying time varied between different colours, probably because of insufficient paint mixing and varying the % of retarder. Tamiya colours XF-49 Khaki and XF-20 Medium Grey are almost indistinguishable. So far, she's looking very rough. Using a translucent plastic bottle allows light through from under the paint, highlighting every imperfection. Getting the painting right on this medium will virtually guarantee a good finish on the model. The way ahead: Apply second coat now work is fully dry. Try very fine rub back with 2500 wet and dry emery paper. Draw up and paint another patch of camouflage pattern for practice with brushwork and paint mixing. Substitute airbrush flow improver for retarder. Hope this is of some use to others attempting brush painting. Thanks for looking. ps: It's a treat exploring the nooks and crannies of the local artist supplies shop for my painting gubbins.

A thing of beauty.

Yes. Trevor is right @Geo1966. As Helmut Newton's ex partner Henry Talbot once told me (back in art school days); "Yonny, lighting is everything. Photography is painting with the light. Now put down the model at once!" In this case, though, the way to improve image quality was in the processing, as you can see. Initially, I was too stingy with the pixels.

😮 The carrion eaters are circling... photo by Dmitri

So I managed to lay on a second coat of green during a cold, wet week. I don't think the finish is quite as good as the first coat, possibly because the conditions weren't as good for spraying; RH 55% and temp. 19°C. Now I'll be liking higher RH and lower temperatures so that the acrylic paints don't dry so quickly as I brush paint. Marking out the camouflage pattern is quite arduous. I'll markup in four sections, I think. Now I have to choose the paints that match the colours on the five-view illustration. Near enough will be good enough. I suspect the recommended colours are approximations anyway. I found a rendering on the web that featured blue and mauve. I found this fanciful and will use the colours recommended in the kit as guide. Today, I lashed out and bought a very expensive paint brush at the art supplies shop in the hope of helping the process. The instructions will have you affix the Schwarzlose MGs perpendicular to the mounting embrasures using nasty little fittings that are supposed to allow a bit of up and down movement. But then they stick out in all directions and I didn't like that. I noticed in photos that they were generally aligned fore and aft when in convoy, so after a little modification I went with that.

Very interesting. Good modelling.

Very nice work. Good looking airframe.

I'm a bit miffed by the quality of my photography and printing above. The finish on the hull is superb, yet my other pic shows it to disadvantage. Gotta get me a decent camera instead of relying on the phone. It's a phone, Nitwit, not a camera!

Classy!

Looks the duck's guts.

At last the weather came to the party; relative humidity below 50%, temperature about 22°C. First a coat of surface primer, then a green base layer. Waiting for the right painting conditions seems to have paid off. No sign of orange peel. Only one or two tiny foreign bodies stuck in the paint. I'll have a think about laying on anther misting of green, but I might equally just get on with hand painting the five-colour camouflage.

Ordering in some Black Widow CA (heck of a name for a heck of a glue) from one of my favourite online suppliers, I noticed this conversion set was in stock. Purportedly to convert a Bf 109G-6 to a G-4/R3 reconnaissance bird (aufklärer), I don't see why it won't allow me to convert my windfall Bf 109F-4/B into an unarmed (just how I like them) F-4/R3 trop aufklärer (note tropical air filter circled) with a bit of decal fiddling. Then I can paint a pretty North African scheme. Alles ist in Ordnung, Schätze!

Removing parts from casting blocks continued... slowly. Almost there. Then came the tub of hot water for bendy games. Managed to get most of the hook out of the propeller blades. Some proved more resistant than others. Manipulating the fuselage halves was more difficult, probably because they are meaty, complex castings. The right half has three distinct alignments; nose to cockpit straight; length of cockpit section heads significantly off centre in a straight line; then bows the other way to the tail. These will not true along the whole length even when clamped to the left half. I managed to straighten the left half, which had a more consistent bow aft of the fuselage, but tweaking that last poofteenth... snap! Disaster... or is it? The break is clean and it seems easier to align the section aft of the cockpit. I've got some thinking to do but can't wait to assemble the halves (thirds) to disguise that unnatural panel line 🤓 And here's my humble wet bench. And I've ordered some of this to help keep the project together 🤓

Very nicely painted and weathered.

Inspired by @Pete in Lincs's Bach post, here's another classical piece of awesome power; Sergei Prokofiev No. 13 Dance of the Knights from Romeo and Juliette.

Brilliant modelling. She's come up a treat. So good to see these less mainstream types presented here.

In D minor, BWV 565. Peerless, @Pete in Lincs. One of the most powerful pieces of music ever written. Gets me deep in the emotional centre every time. At a posh school I briefly attended before being kicked out (Yes!), our music teacher was a concert organist and the chapel where we assembled each morning had a cracking good organ. This was one of his favourite pieces, a fabulous way to start the school day (which soon turned to faeces regardless).