Paintychops

Thanks for all your likes and comments Thank you! TBH usually my photos tend to show up any imperfections that my eyes have missed. However this time they've managed to hide them instead! 😂

Hello again, Time for another 1/48 fighter jet, this time an F-15e Strike Eagle from Great Wall Hobby. Decals were from DXM (Double Excellent Models), and the cockpit seats were from Quickboost. This took around two months to finish. This was intended to be a clean build, as I was trying to closely follow the real thing, referencing some brilliant photos by Jonathan Derden on his website (well worth a look BTW). It was going ok until the decals... don't get me wrong, they aren't bad decals as such, but the wings are something that really need to be placed in one take. The first one went on fine, but trying to line up the second one correctly.. it soon turned in to a ripped mess. If this wasn't enough, the 'sealing' varnish spray afterwards showed up how much the decals hadn't settled to the body as first thought. To make matters worse, I also managed to rip away the eagle face on the left hand side of the craft with no hope of saving the original decal 😂 I will admit to being slightly impressed with my own repair efforts by using spare decal, and painting in the eye freehand (I also found that GW/Citadels 'Administratum Grey' is a near identical match to the light grey decal colour) The last picture shows this. The other (many) mistakes were mostly masked with weathering, mainly AMMO Oilbrushers and Tamiya Weathering Powders. In general this kit was painted up using a variety of Acrylic paints, with various enamel washes used. The GWH kit itself is OK.. I'd read some mixed reviews after I'd brought it, so was expecting a bit of a challenge. Some bits just did not line up at all, whilst others fitted better than expected. Do have some plastic putty to hand though, you will need it. The Quickboost aftermarket seats were somewhat unnecessary as the ones included are of decent quality. There were plenty of times I hated how this was going with the multiple decaling issues. However now it's finished I think it isn't so bad after all. Sure the decal 'wings' aren't properly aligned, and there is still too much visible silvering for my liking, but could have been a lot worse. It's certainly given me a lot more respect for car modellers who regularly deal with large decals over difficult surfaces! As always, let me know your thoughts!

Great work you've done with this. I'm also impressed you did so well with the FCM decals; I did the other black & yellow scheme a while back & had an absolute 'mare with them. Top job all round 👏

Thank you all for your comments and likes, I do appreciate it. After spending a couple of months working on this, it's great to have such positive feedback! Although it was slow going to begin with, finishing this has given me renewed vigour for building model aircraft again, & I've just started my next kit - let's see if this one goes as well! 😅

Hello again, It's been almost a year since my last aircraft (I'm mostly in to painting mins) but had the itch to do another and so this great kit was completed over the course of two months. It was mostly airbrushed with Vallejo 'Dark Ghost Grey' on the top, with Mission Models 'Light Ghost Grey' on the undersides (more on this in a bit) done in the pre-shade technique on a black spraycan undercoat. The black was a mix of Vallejo gloss black, regular black and black ink to give it a bit of shine. The panel lines on the body were done with Vallejo Dark Grey acrylic model wash (I'm a big fan of their model washes) with enamel washes used on the smaller parts. Other weathering was done mostly with MIG AMMO Oil & Streaking Brushers, and Tamiya weathering powder sets. The decals were all OOTB, and the only third party item was the seat, which is by Eduard. The additional details, particularly the cockpit, were all hand-painted with my occasionally steady hand. I had intended this to be a bit cleaner (I say the same thing with every bloody aircraft! 😂) but as usual got carried away as it's a part of the process I do really enjoy. As such it's probably a bit more weathered than a CAG aircraft should be. Saying that I did spend a fair bit of time looking at photos of F-18's online and in books (the 'F-18 in Detail and Scale' by Haagen Klaus was a very useful purchase) and noticed that there were pics of this particular aircraft having had patch-ups in the opposite colour to what it should be, particularly around the front end and the fold up wings. I thought this looked cool so attempted to replicate it in a few places. Same too with the oily fuel spills on the underside of the aircraft, although I did take this more to extremes. A few things I messed up on; firstly I should have filled in the gap line where the two front halfs come together. Whilst the fit is generally very very good, I didn't notice the middle gap line running up the front and underside of the nose until it was too late. I did attempt to sand down the metallic box thing at the front of the nose (excuse my lack of technical terms) but as this was curved to begin with, it didn't look great. The canopy got a bit messy when masking, painting and sanding (I hate doing canopies) but thankfully it's not too noticeable when in an open position. Finally I decided to paint the red line separating the black and the grey of the jet, as I don't like the faff of using decals that long and thin, however, despite masking this wasn't my neatest work and it shows. Oh well. As mentioned, this is a great kit, and was generally not too painful to put together. The folded wings option wasn't too much of a headache, likewise all the small details around the wheel bays went easier than I expected. There were very few areas that required sanding and filling. The decals were generally decent, it's only on the smaller ones where writing should be (and it's instead just lines) that you might want to consider third party options. The only parts I would consider third party options for other than the seat are the exhaust nozzles and maybe the wheels. When you look at pictures of the exhausts they have much more detail in them than sculpted, particularly on the insides. I have attempted to paint the details in. Trying to add additional bits of card/plastic I think would be too tricky, and way out of my comfort zone. A few other things you may find useful; firstly, Army Painter primer spray cans are fantastic! They are more of a laquer spray than just acrylic, and are of a much larger size than Tamiya/Mr Hobby ones for around the same price. They are available at many indy board game shops so well worth a try. Secondly, as mentioned, Mission Models 'Light Ghost Grey' acrylic was used on the undersides. Now I'm a huge fan of their 'transparent dust' paint, especially when mixed in slightly with other colours to get a dusty/dirty effect, but this one? not so much. It will be still be active days after its been applied, meaning it has to be varnished ASAP in order to protect it. If you get it slightly wet, thats it, your paint job won't be so neat. No issues with Vallejo products doing the same after a couple of hours, let alone days. Finally, although it's barely noticeable here, I created a good textured effect on the bulkier missles using Vallejo 'Rust Texture' acrylic effects. A few coats of that, then spray on your chosen colour and they will look much more realistic than the smooth plastic provided. Oh, and finally, in case anyone says it I started this kit a few weeks before seeing 'Top Gun Maverick' which I highly recommend having been a bit skeptical of it in production! 😂 Thanks for looking, any thoughts or queries let me know!

Wow. Wonderful job 👏

Very impressive. I made the same mistake as you with the decals on the missiles, but no big deal. It's the one thing I think that wasn't very clear in the instructions, & besides, you hardly notice them with the jet in its upright display position. Top work though. Really good work on the subtle weathering. Very easy to go a bit OTT but you've nailed it!

That is very impressive, I may well have to check out the magazine to see more!

Top work. Very impressive!

Thanks for your comments, I appreciate it. Perhaps more importantly, thank you for your detailed tutorial - I honestly don't believe I would achieved this result without your excellent guide. As others have said, your guide is far better than many of the books & magazines out there claiming to offer the same thing. I hope you're able to do another one day. As for future flankers, I'm not sure as yet. I do have a GWH MIG-29 to complete, & I have been considering the new SU-33 Minibase kit. Both will not be for some time yet! Regards,

Once again I am somewhat taken aback by the amount of positive comments this has recieved so thank you! Grimdark style of painting planes, I've gotta say I like that! Where 40k & scale modelling meet. In light of that, here is a hastily taken photo of my plague marines from the shelf above taking over my aircraft hanger, which is probably about as grimdark as this particular board gets.. Re. the acrylic washes, it was a bit of an experiment, but done so as I'd had issues with enamel washes previously. I think overall I've yet to find a wash that I would use repeatedly (that and I need more practice). That's a very good tip about the flow improver though, will have to remember that. Best of luck with the rest of it. Make sure you post pics! Thank you. It took around 3 months in total, with well over 100 hours spent. It very much became a labour of love in the end, but glad that it's done

Fantastic work. I think you're selling yourself short with that paint job; I would be more than happy if I got that good a finish

Thanks very much for all your likes & comments I .. honestly have no idea. This was the loadout printed in the instruction manual & I just went with it. The SU-35 is a beast of a fighter if that helps. It's bigger than a F-14 (certainly in 1/48 scale at least!)

y I had originally started this as a WIP thread, but after my first few posts I stumbled across Haneto's brilliant WIP thread, which is quite frankly the be-all-and-end-all of this particular model, making any of my attempts to be helpful completely worthless! 😂 But more usefully it gave me just about everything I needed to make the most out of this kit, as well as setting the standard ridiculously high... I didn't quite emulate Haneto's awe-inspiring work. Not even near in some cases. But now its complete I can appreciate it more. This is my third ever aircraft (my paint skills come from painting GW minis) and this has been my biggest project to date. Painted with acrylics (including the metal parts) from Vallejo, Citadel & Scale 75. I used the 'Russian aircraft' air paint set from Vallejo for the main base colours, although I used different colours from the set instead of the recommended 'flanker' paints, as I found them too dull and similar to one another. Weathering was done mostly via acrylic washes (the Vallejo washes are very good for manipulation with a wet brush/cloth for a good hour afterwards, despite being acrylic water based), although some enamel washes were used on the smaller parts. The exhaust and tail fins colour patina was partly done with the use of Tamiya weathering powders. Watercolour pencils were also used on various parts on the body. The 'lines' painted on the engine exhausts were done using inks (with the occasional help of a ruler!) A Molotow chrome marker was used on the brightest metal parts. I ended up using the Begemot decals with the set provided, as I had a few concerns over the GWH decals being a bit thick. Overall, this wasn't the case, and if you are considering the Begemot decals, be aware they are not a complete replacement, and you'll still need both. There is also a few errors in the Begemot decal guide, where the GWH one is by and large spot-on. The Begemot decals are generally much nicer and more detailed however. As far as the kit goes, it is great and generally fits together very well, but a few issues to watch out for; firstly consider scribing over the panel lines, as some of them are very faint and can easily be lost durng the priming and painting stages. Part of the reason why this kit looks so weathered is due to having to repeat washes where the wash just wouldn't stick in the panel lines. I also had to re-draw all the lines on the metalic parts of the rear fins, which was a hassle and why those parts may look a bit odd. Secondly, be aware that there are some very tiny parts on the main body that can easily be broken when handling it. There is a missing antenna thing from each side of the wing where they've got caught somewhere and subsequently disappeared, most likely inside the vacumn cleaner. Haneto did suggest in his thread to replace them with brass rod, but that's a bit out of my comfort zone. Next, you will need to shave off a good couple of minimetres of the main body around the insertion of the engine nozzles as that is not a good fit if left untouched. Finally, be very very careful with the landing gear assembly. I made a very annoying balls-up, but thankfully it's barely noticeable due to everything else going on with the craft. Once again this has come out more weathered than I originally intended, as I was going for a cleaner build. It's something for me to work on. My next couple of planned projects are to do a couple of scale 1/24 cars, which I am definatley not planning to weather! After that it should be an F-15e, also by GWH. Well done if you made it this far and thanks for looking. Huge shout out to Haneto for all the help and inspiration his WIP thread provided me (if you have no idea of what I'm talking about, go and look for it NOW - also to see what a SU-35 should really look like!) 😂 Any questions feel free to ask!

Really like this. Just goes to show even the most simplest of plastic toys can be transformed into something great. Would love to see more! Could see this as being part of a great diorama...

Top job. Really impressive photo too!

Love this. Top work!

Spectacular job! I can imagine those decals could have been a nightmare but you pulled it off perfectly. As Bertie above just said, something to emulate!

Very good spot! Yes, I was inspired by the sundowners 'logo' & ended up using a variation of it on all my orange marines. Not the easiest thing to paint on shoulder pads but there you go. Best of luck with the kit, but it sounds like you've done your research. Only things I'd add is to decide early on whether you want the front & rear hatches open or closed. If closed, get them sealed up early on as they will likely require further sanding & filling to get a decent fit. You might get one hatch to both open & close without any issues, but to achieve both you're either a master modeller or very very lucky! Also, don't forget about the rear of the craft when it comes to filling gaps. I was always under the impression much of it would be covered over, until it was fully assembled. Then again, it might fit with your DG... Yes the instructions are a joke, even the sales guy at the Forge World store admitted they "weren't the best", which going by GW standards is probably a sacking offence. If you have any other issues with it, always feel free to message me.

Wow. Absolutely love everything about this!

Thanks for all your likes and comments The pilot's name on the side of the cockpit should be a dead giveaway! maybe less so the crudely painted helmet markings..! Admittedly my colour scheme (which all my marines are in) probably do distract from it a bit. As for the Thunderhawk, yes this kit is meant to be the smaller, more agile fighter based version of that legendary kit. You can also buy a newer, resin-only version of that beast, but as it costs serveral hundreds... I think I'll pass. I do think that GW put out a great product of mini the majority of the time. There really is nothing else out there that competes with what GW is doing. Sure, their kits often lack the build quality of say, Tamiya or Ban-Dai, but they produce around x10 times their output in variety, and do reasonably well given the sheer demand there is in GW right now, and it often appears they are struggling to keep up. I do agree with your comments about FW though. It seems the newer stuff is better quality, but quality control seems to vary so wildly overall, and is a bit of a gamble, which it really shouldn't be at those prices.

Hello all, here's another finished kit I've been meaning to post up on here; the Space Marine Storm Eagle by Forge World (Games Workshop), finished this about a year ago. The largest GW kit I've done, also my first FW resin kit.. and quite possibly my last. Although a resin/plastic hybrid, many of the larger resin parts were horrible, warped out of shape and required a fair amount of work to fit. Thankfully there was a series of very good videos on YT which tackled this, and was a great help (full credit to the author, whose username I've forgot...) There were also parts that needed more filling in, especially at the rear, which in the end I passed off as battle damage. This was airbrushed with acrylics, then hand painted. I used a combination of mini-painting and scale modelling techniques, with both acrylic and enamel washes, weathering powders, and oilbrushers, along with edge highlighting just about everything, and some OSL effects. I'd painted the interior too, so it's fair to say this took me a while! In hindsight I would have done the airbrushing differently, creating more artificial shading for what is a very blocky model. It was good practice for getting back in to actual scale modelling. This is a custom paint scheme of mine, and for the larger models I like to use 80's film & TV references; the one used here should be very obvious! As always, thanks for looking!

Despite the fact there is only a short time difference between these updates, this is a four week update as I'd meant to upload the previous a month ago, but failed to do so. Oh well. The next step has been the wheelbays. A very small update, as I've been out of action due to a shoulder op, but back at it now. Here are the latest pics: Once again the level of detail provided is incredible - all those cables are separate parts that need to be carefully inserted in. They are fiddly, & I did manage to accidentally break one, after placing each one on blu-tack to paint then remove. Despite that it glued back ok, and doesn't notice. The fittings here were a bit more tricky; this isn't as well engineered as a Tamiya kit, but still of a very high standard. The individual parts were hand painted, with just a simple acrylic wash (Citadel 'Nuln Oil') Although tempting to add more detail & weathering effects, these parts will never be seen once fully assembled, this log being the most attention they'll ever get. I've followed the 'official' colours listed within the instruction manual, although there is one printing error where it lists the colour of piping as being 'black green' when it should be silver - it's the only time that colour is listed! But it's not a big deal overall. Next step now will be the assembly and painting of the air intakes - a somewhat dull part that I'll be keeping very simple as it'll hardly be seen when assembled, but important as it'll need to be fitted before I can start attaching the main body.

Hello all, currently working on this beast of a kit, and following a request, I thought I'd share this build log with you. Hopefully some of you may find this useful. Here are some photos of the cockpit; (Apologies for the slight blurriness of the pics, they seemed alright when I took them..) Plenty has already been said about the amount of detail in this kit, & I can only confirm this. No need for any 'detail-up' parts here! of course, the downside is there are a lot of small fiddly parts that can easily be lost. Thankfully the fit of everything has been pretty good so far. I've used a mix of Vallejo, Scale 75 & Citadel acrylic paints for this, with the main colours airbrushed on. The interior blue was a mix of about three different colours as I didn't have the exact colour I was looking for. I was looking for a blue with a bit of vibrancy that makes the cockpit and all its details stand out, as well as closely match the real thing (or from what I can best ascertain from stock photos online). The floor colour looks messy, but once the seat is applied so little will be visible I didn't bother to spend too much time on it, a lesson learnt from previous builds. Here's a couple of (blurry) photos of the cockpit with seat attached; For the weathering I used enamel washes/panel liners by AK & AMMO, with a small amount of weathering powder added around the footwells. My biggest concern is the decals - one of the biggest complaints of this kit is to do with the thickness of the decals provided, & the few added to the seat do appear more like vinyl stickers in real life. Whilst very detailed, I didn't want to attempt to add the decals of the powered up screens as I could see that going very wrong. It's also made me think about getting the aftermarket decals from Begemot for this kit, although I didn't really want to spend any more money on this. Overall I don't think this is the best cockpit I've painted, but considering how small it is, & that it'll be buried within the housing of the main body, it should work out ok. Any questions/comments, let me know!

Excellent job. You've made it look easy! Despite what you say about the simplicity of the masks, you can tell you've put a lot of skill & effort into getting the model looking this good. The WIP thread was a good read too!