I thought I would show you a strange thing I do to avoid my WW1 aeroplanes having a plastic feel. Since WW1 planes were coated in doped and painted linen, I give the "linen" parts of the model a rough coat of paint and then cover them with very thin paper surgical tape, then a layer of acrylic Vallejo satin varnish to seal the tape, and then paint over the tape (acrylic vallejo paints) using a brush.
I even do this to the roundels (which requires some slightly tricky painting once they are covered with the tape). The smaller more detailed decals are added later.
It's slight overkill but prevents the kits having a plasticy feel (which otherwise has to be overcome by lots of weathering details). WW1 aircraft after all did not have nice smooth surfaces painted with airbrushes!!
I show some photos by way of explanation:
In the above photo I have painted most of the wing, but the right side and the roundels are still to be painted. It gives wonderful fabric type texture to the model. I need to add another layer of paint to tidy up.
The surgical tape is helpfully transparent so you can see the roundels underneath and paint over them. This also means you don't have to paint right up to the "edges" of the colours in the roundel either - if that makes sense. Which makes the overpainting much easier (but still tricky). I will show results after painting in a later post.