SEAC Spitfire Mk.VIII- 1/72nd Scale Hasegawa Kit

[johnd]

Excellent modelling again, Tony.

Have you done a tutorial or a hints & tips item on brush painting? If not, could you please? That's one of the things letting down my modelling at the moment and any enlightenment would be very welcome.

John.

[Peter Lloyd]

Excellent modelling again, Tony.

Have you done a tutorial or a hints & tips item on brush painting? If not, could you please? That's one of the things letting down my modelling at the moment and any enlightenment would be very welcome.

A second for that. A couple of mates have recently started modelling and my only advice on painting is 'get an airbrush'. This is because I have forgotten what limited brush-painting skills I might have had. I'd love to give them some decent info on how to get good results as they'd prefer to brush paint for convenience.

Great models all. Indeed, it seems from my reading that few Allied pilots in any theatre really attempted to differentiate Oscars from Zeros, except perhaps in China.

[Mr T]

A very nice model Tony and shows what can be done with a brush. I must admit these days most of my stuff is airbrushed using acrylics, but I always used to brush paint and enjoyed it. The thing that put me off airbrushing using enamels was clean up and the amount of solvents involved and residual smell despite my best efforts to avoid it and which never went done well with SWMBO and young children.Using acrylics I find is much easier and domestically acceptable.

As always you provide interest and inspiration with your models.

[-Neu-]

Hey Tony

Very very nice build, particularly with the brush. What's really impressive is that it seems you've been able to get some subtle shading in as well... which is tough to do even with a Air Brush.

I too have had a bit of a SEAC bonanza of late, and basically used up that same Rising Decals sheet. My interest was piqued after reading Forgotten Armies and Forgotten Wars about the British colonial history in South East Asia from 1940 to 1950, last spring. I burned through the two books and I was hooked. Eight kits later I still want to build more. I don't want to take away from your build thread, but you can see some of them in various states of building in this thread over at ARC. Most do not have final photos however... (like the thunderbolt)

Edited January 30, 2013 by -Neu-

[tonyot]

Thanks again folks for your very kind comments, sorry for not responding earlier but I thought that the thread had died and had not checked it for a while!!

I`ve not done a brush painting tutorial but I do often get asked about the technique`s that I use, but basically it is just lots of practice! I find that a flat brush (larger for large areas of coverage and narrower for smaller areas and be prepared to use multiple brushes) helps a lot as it limits the amount of paint going onto the model and be prepared to apply a number of coats (usually 3, depending on the paint and the colour being used), just be patient! Sanding the model between coats also helps and for the final coat of clear matt varnish this is `scrubbed' onto the model using a relatively large, almost dry brush, it helps to buff the model slightly and hides the brush marks. Apart from this I cannot really add anything,...sorry.

Nick, thanks for the info about the Oscars and you are more than welcome to use the model photos on your blog. I did put a request on Britmodeller when I was building them asking whether the underside of the earlier Oscar should be silver or Grey but nobody could help so I went with silver for the earlier one and grey for the latter, but I obviously took the wrong choice,..ho hum! From memory both were built from the excellent 1/48th scale Fine Moulds kits and like most of my models photos of the real thing were used as reference for both, from memory mainly from the Grub Street books `Air War Over Burma and the `Bloody Shambles' series plus Ospreys `Oscar Aces'.

All the best

Tony O

[MikeR]

A lovely set of models!

Mike.