Col.

Any progress is good progress John and this looks to be excellent progress

You've a busy workbench there Tim.

That's nice work across all the various components of this project Eric.

Tidy work.

It rather depends on which school of thought and style you wish to emulate but light fading and modulation of the main colour is usual. Some people prefer to put on a mottled base coat using different colours or black and white as underpainting then build up thin layers of the final colour until getting just enough of the pervious layers to show a subtle affect. As for the Merlin oil leak pattern; find plenty reference photos of where they emanate from and streak back to on pretty much any Spitfire and have fun replicating that. I'd recommend using a very dark brown colour rather than pure glossy black.

Nice work Tim and a clever solution to the tailplane problem.

Nice progress in the interior

Nice progress Peter.

Yes indeed it does We most certainly are

Going with a care-worn paint finish will add a lot of visual interest to this one. Oh dear, what a shame, never mind

It's good to see a photo Voodoo in our GB

That layer of silver paint has made a big difference to the look of this one

Nice subject choice Stefan

While you're on a later start you're off to a great start.

Good fine work there Rob.

Impressive paintwork and the decals look to be decent quality

That's looking good Steve.

Nice progress and some lovely detail in there. Going with a dark brown primer will work well as any areas where the top coat misses will look like it hasn't been hosed down properly between ops.

Small perhaps Cliff but perfectly formed as the saying goes.

Nice progress again Chris.

While they may not be your thing Rob it's coming together nicely Rob.

It certainly looks to be coming together well Steve.

Taking on its nice lines well now. How well is the fit of all those parts?

Don't know about you Robert but in the past I used to find moving from representing a solid object to something that had to represent a human being a daunting step in any project due to using different techniques and had to finish the figure(s) before starting on the machine or they simply wouldn't get done. In fact I was about to say that envisaging the project as a unified whole rather than two separate elements helped but then remembered I've two completed Seafire models that have been 'finished' for a few years but still require figures added to them so perhaps my advice isn't that good after all

Nice progress Giorgio. You're finding all the same issues with this one as I did and using similar solutions to tame it.