opus999

Wow Johnny... those rivets look AWESOME!!! This is going to be superb! This will be a good example for @VT Red Sox Fan, I loved how your mottled variation from the stencils looked on your Horton -- and that's what prompted me to get my stencils. Thanks mate!

I just re-read my post from last night and I may not have been clear. When I said "I find I do that better with post shading (post fading?)" I only meant the lighter sun-fading effects. I still use a marble coat of different colors to create changes in tone in the final coat. My usual plan of attack is to primer with Mr. Surfacer 1500 black, then do the marble coat, put the base color (camouflage) coat on and then do little faded bits (if appropriate) after the initial paint scheme is finished.

Thank you!

1) I ordered "Iwata-Medea Artool Freehand Airbrush Templates". They are a bit spendy, but they are solvent resistant so I've been able to clean the paint off of them a few times now with no issues. I think with proper care they could last for a long time. Here's a handy link if you have nothing against Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00881ITL0/ One more thing to note about the stencils: on the P-51B build, I had the stencils pressed up against the plastic which gave the "spots" sharp edges. I decided I didn't like that and since then I've held them 4-5 mm above the surface and sprayed through them, giving a softer edge which I think results in a more realistic finish. 2) I used this technique on my F2H Banshee and it worked OK, but was very subtle. My post (https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235058370-f2h-banshee-172-hobbycraft/&do=findComment&comment=3404888) states that I used Mr. Color Wood brown, Mr. Color Engine Gray, Testors Gunship gray and Testors Rust as the marbling colors. I remember being very happy with the end result, color-wise, but wished I'd been brave enough to put the colors on thicker to exaggerate the contrast a little more. So, doing test pieces in a case like this is definitely recommended. This build also used salt weathering to emulate the pattern of weathering on these birds from sea spray (pictures of operational birds in this post: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235058370-f2h-banshee-172-hobbycraft/&do=findComment&comment=3404656). It worked well, but salt weathering is a mess, and if I were to do it today, I would just use the stencils and a highly thinned gray. You can judge how well it turned out at the RFI: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235059278-f2h-3-4-banshee-red-rippers-172-hobbycraft/ So the short answer is "yes", but the hard part is making it subtle enough to not stand out like a sore thumb but not so subtle that its ineffective. Which is hard.

A fair point, and I'd thought of this earlier when I was researching prior to the build. On close-ups of abandoned E. German MiG-23's (on display, but un-restored) there are a fair number of stencils in Russian. There are a few in German too. On restored aircraft, closeup photos reveal a mix of languages as well. It turns out that the vast majority of the stencils on this sheet are so small and badly printed that they're just smudges instead of distinct characters. I'd read recently that E. Germans were required to learn Russian in school, so I suppose that's one reason why the stencils are a mix of languages. Besides, with the super-zoom of my camera it's easy to read, but with my eyes it's not so easy and on the shelf I wouldn't know if it was Russian, German or Swahili!

Getting closer.... so... many... stencils... and even more stencils.... I'd say I'm about 75% on the decals. I decided to use the Hasegawa stencils because they were far better than the Hi-Decal Line stencils. Plus they were in white and the H.D.L. stencils were all in black. Pictures I've seen of E. German MiG-23's seem to have a mix of white and black. After putting all the Hasegawa stencils on, I filled in with the H.D.L. stencils. It has occurred to me that there is a lot of touch up painting that I need to do. Some is fixing a little paint damage, one is an "oops" under the cockpit and then there's some details that I over looked and need to fix. It seems like there are a ton of details that need attending to. Just goes to show that getting the decals on is only about the half-way mark in a build. Here's a little diversion... I've gotten to the point where I don't document my painting prep much anymore. I used to black-base by "marbling" the base color onto a black primer. Recently I found some paint stencils (masks) that give a random appearance to painting so I've been using that instead of marbling because it's a lot faster and my hand doesn't cramp up from the prolonged death-grip on the airbrush. @VT Red Sox Fan is starting to explore paint shading and toning with his new airbrush in his terrific Airfix FW-190A build. I told him that I would post some examples of how I approach painting, which is only one viewpoint and works for me, but may not work for everybody. So, an example of "marbling" that I could find quickly is here: From my Jian Ji-2 build a couple of years ago. With this technique, you use a black primer, and then set your airbrush to the psi you use for mottling Luftwaffe aircraft and get the airbrush close and start "scribbling" on the black with the base color. A lot like how a child scribbles on paper. The goal is random patches of dark and light. I will then switch colors if I want some tonal variance in the final coat or if I'm going for a faded paint look (although nowadays I find I do that better with post shading (post fading?)). I also find that when I'm done, if I squint while I look at it, I get a feel if the contrast between light and dark is too much or not enough and I can adjust accordingly. Then when I feel its good enough, I'll make a slightly thinner than normal mix of the base coat and start painting it on, being careful to not wipe out all the hard work of marbling. I used to just spray the overcoat on in a sweeping fashion, but these days I kind of make circular motions and work my way across the aircraft. That way I can focus on areas that are too dark or lighten up in areas that already have enough paint. It's hard to describe, but if you decide to give it a try, you'll figure out what works for you. Also, if you like to accent panel lines, you can use a dark gray ( or even black ) to go over the lines after you've marbled and before you put the base color on. As I said, I've gotten lazy and use a stencil to do this. Here's my "marbling" from my P-51B build, using the stencils: In the end, it looks the same with either technique. With this current build, I used the stencils and then marbled by hand in spots that were hard to get the stencil into. After the base color went on, I added random patches of a lighter color (olive drab on the dark green, a tan on the wood brown and a lighter shade of the light green). I did this primarily to try and emulate the patchy look I see in operational E. German MiG-23s. So, keep in mind that the contrast between light and dark in these close up pictures is more than I usually have because of that reason. I think the greens look all right, but I may have to add some lighter tones to the brown. Anyway, that's how I do it and it works for me. Good luck if you decide to give this technique a try. Remember, whatever works for you and gives the results you want is the "right" technique.

No progress yesterday. I had some planned computer maintenance to do... which isn't all bad, I built myself a stand alone music player using a Raspberry Pi a couple of years ago and decided to upgrade it with a larger touchscreen, and a new motherboard. Naturally it took hours because of the changes required in the operating system to make it work and taking the opportunity to fix or improve things from my previous version. (I know... "why not use a phone for music?" I have my reasons.) So I was building something... just not a model. Thursday night I was able to get about 1/3 of the decals on. My hope is to have them all finished this weekend. I can't say I'm thrilled with these Hi-decal Line decals. Their performance is... well... strange. For example, with my strongest solvent the decals didn't wrinkle. They did, however, curl up on the edges. Sometimes quite dramatically, which was a real thrill when it happened with the first stencil decal. Luckily, they uncurl again and appear to be fine. Some other strange things about these decals: there is a large area of carrier film around even the smallest stencils, so I have to trim them back quite a bit. The edges of un-trimmed decals often don't adhere no matter what I try, so a little gentle trimming when they are dry is often in order. They are dull (not glossy) decals so they look terrible against the gloss, but an overcoat of Aqua Gloss makes them look just fine. The edges of the carrier film are straight on three sides, but always ragged on on. The ragged edge seems to break pieces off easily which makes me wonder if the decals are some how thicker on one side and get gradually thinner toward the other. I don't know how that would happen with each and every decal on a sheet, but that's how it seems. Weird. But things are progressing fine... and hopefully I'll get more done today!

The MPC I built back in the '80s turned out to be a bare metal Flogger -- I suspect it was because I didn't read the instructions and/or mis-interpreted the cover painting I think it was supposed to be all-gray as well. Thanks Johnny! I hope it looks the same after the dull coat.

Thanks Steve! I seem to remember this was one of the better kits I've done. The fit was pretty good, although the intakes needed some help (although I have yet to meet a jet model that doesn't need help with the intakes). I also remember really liking the decals. Hope you can get one! Thank you!

Me too! Thank you... I find I like the paint scheme even more than I thought I would! Slow going right now with 100 stencils to put on, but I'll see if I can post a couple pics, for what it's worth. Thanks Nikolay! Those colors really go well together, don't they?

Trying to make dark colors darker is quite a challenge. I will usually go the other way and add some random spots of the same color lightened with a drop of neutral gray. it has to be subtle though, so it takes a light touch. If you look at my current build, on Wednesday's update, there are some examples with the Dark Green. Keep in mind, that I wanted the top to look slightly faded so I used an even lighter paint, however the tail fin is a good example.I will try to remember to take some better example pictures to show what I'm talking about.

Too bad about the wing roots. I'm also curious to see how you deal with them. Good catch on the yokes, too!

I'll just dog pile on what @The Spadgent and @giemme said. For me, it was experimenting on paint mules to see what looked right (you'd be surprised what looks right and what doesn't!). And then I forget half the time anyway and have to do more tests. .

This was fun to watch and it turned out wonderfully!

Just a couple pictures to show there has been a little progress. I masked and painted the airbrakes and landing gear bays. I forgot to take pictures of the airbrakes. You may have noticed already, but I also got the gloss coat on, which took a couple days since each coat takes 6 hours to cure. last night I had a few minutes so I put the national insignia on both sides of the tail fin. Which looks pretty sharp. I think it's too big though. Even though I thought the gloss coat was smooth enough, I had a little trouble with silvering that I was able to fix before I went to bed last night. I put another coat of gloss coat on the aircraft today, just in case.

Wow! These are great photos! Thanks for sharing them! A look at a couple popular color matching sites showed Tamiya's XF-67 to be equivalent to Mr. Color's Khaki green. I have used that Khaki green and it is a darker green, but I could see it passing for a darker Olive Drab, so maybe that was Tamiya's idea of what #7 should look like? I also had educate myself about the differences between Hei's and Tei's, turns out I had some mis-conceptions and that both my Hasegawa and Tamiya kits are Teis. So, given that, and what @2996 Victor quoted above, my plan now is to build the Hasegawa kit and use the Tamiya decals for 19th Air Group, Phillipines, 1945 and paint it OD top/NMF bottom. It sounds like US Olive Drab is a close match to the IJA #7...? Thanks for all of the discussion, I've learned quite a bit!

Wow! Looks great!

+1 for this suggestion. I've found that the most realistic builds I've seen have all sorts of "tonal variation" where the main color has all kinds of subtle shades in it. It is usually hard to capture on a photo, but some have been able to. I know you saw my WIP for my P-51B where I tried to use some "pre-toning" and I think it was my most successful attempt. Certainly something to experiment with. Personally I've given up on pre-shading panel lines except occasionally where I see it in the source photos. I do something called "Black basing" where you use a black primer and then use the airbrush to marble on the color so that you have random areas of slightly darker and slightly lighter color. In the end it makes a realistic finish as there are always color variations from paint application, dirt, etc. Recently I've gotten lazy and switched to a randomized stencil to get this effect. For a first attempt at mottling with an airbrush, this turned out great! You should be happy with that!

Hmm... unfortunate about that alignment. I wish I had an idea of how to fix. Maybe it's worth dry fitting the landing gears on to see how noticeable it is after that. Maybe the gears will be mismatched in just the right way to make it all level again.

Wow... sorry to hear about the rivet troubles... nice area to take a walk in though, kinda reminds me of my in-laws' place in Wisconsin! The rivets are looking great though... and you can hold your head up high because a lesser man probably would've broken!

Beautiful! The foil looks amazing and the camo is so well done. This is a superb, realistic build.

Fantastic! Beautifully and realistically weathered.

What a terrific build! You have such a realistic NMF... I am quite jealous. I have to agree that this is a good kit -- I assume it shares most parts with the Trumpeter Su-15 TM I built about a year ago and, except for a little work needed on the intakes, I found it to be a well designed and molded kit. I did mine in a camo scheme that was pretty unique and interesting, but frankly I think bare metal suits this aircraft and you've done a wonderful job.

That is a fantastic build! I don't know that I've ever seen a model of a Victor before and here are three!

Thank you! Thanks, Pete! Gotta love a challenge!