Hello!
I'm Nathan, I've been scale modelling for about 2 years now, and have had an Instagram account (soyme_scale_models) for just under 2 years showing the progress on my builds. Joined Britmodeller recently after hearing about it from a couple friends.
I'll start off with some pictures of a model I completed in early December, the first from what I'd like to call my 'new phase of modelling' where I really focus on making things look grubby 😂. This is a conversion of the well known Airfix 1:72 Spitfire Mk.Ia, into a Spitfire PR.Mk.IG. These (along with later PR.Mk.XIX variants) were to fly at dawn and dusk, just below the clouds, over enemy territory on photo reconnaissance missions, therefore were painted a light pink colour which made them virtually invisible to the ground.
This was a rather simple conversion, as it only involved drilling 3 holes, one on the port side of the fuselage, and 2 on the underside just behind the wings (I slipped with the Dremel, completely ruining the starboard fuselage roundel, but attempted to save it by making a hit from shrapnel), and leaving off the antenna mast. It was a relatively easy build, but I found removing the aligner pins on the rear fuselage was necessary, as the halves wouldn't fit properly otherwise. Hardly any filler was needed, and the fit was decent.
She was painted using Tamiya acrylics, with a mix of XF-12 and XF-7 at around a 70% to 30% ratio. The paint job was pretty simple, being all one colour. I then applied a coat of X-22 clear gloss under the decals, which were all from my spares box, following various illustrations of the aircraft. Another coat of X-22 was applied before using one of my favourite products, one I'd highly recommend, the Flory Models Dark Dirt clay based wash. I bought this at Scale Model world in Telford (the worlds largest model show) and it is FANTASTIC. After that was a coat of Tamiya XF-86 flat clear, then exhaust stains, and she was done!
I hope you like her, I definitely enjoyed building her.
Cheers, Nathan