Woodo79: Year One

[Woodo79]

Emerging from the wilderness to post my debut Yearbook.

First up was the one that started it all. A Hurricane Mk.I starter kit gifted somewhat tongue-in-cheek by Stosh65.

Mostly just like riding a bike although quickly discovered things have come a long way since the days of making up a red arrow hawk in the parent's dining room table in the late 80s. Went in strong on the weathering, perhaps too strong given my lack of practice and managed to royally cock up the matte varnish finish, but all in all not a bad start, I thought.

 

Next up was a Vampire T.11 simply because I consciously didn't want to be cranking out just WWII stuff and some brazen part of me decided that yeah, how hard can doing metal finish in hairy stick be? Well...

After lots of gritted teeth, lots and lots of very thin layers of Tamiya's finest chrome it mostly came out ok. Guess I'll learn my lesson, eh?

 

Next up, again a concious decision to do something "different" and also because I had an urge to do a specific project; a battered up old car. So I got my hands on a VW Beetle kit and got to work. A bizarre little geriatric tooling; very sparse interior detail but a crapload of fiddly axel and suspension parts, I got to work weathering and generally abusing the poor little bug. Rather proud of how it turned out if I'm being immodest.

 

So it was then back to planes. Did I say something about learning my lesson earlier? Yeah, which is obviously why I decided that another metal effect bird was the way to go. I just really liked the contrast between the metal and the bold gloss red tbh, but for reasons I never quite worked out, the paint took against me and just wouldn't sit right and took a lot of effort to get to come together. The kit itself is wonderful and goes together really well, but painting it up turned in to a nightmare. I also experimented with oil washing for the first time, to mixed success, though it did definitely give the plane a grimy, fume spattered look that worked out alright in the end I think. Oh and there was those horrible moments where some rogue Decalfix stripped half the paint off a wing and one yellow stripe decal fell apart and I had to quickly paint the other one in. I needed a beer.

 

Lastly, just crossing the finishing line in time was an Academy Spitfire. Really nice kit (unless your a stickler for accuracy I'm told, but I'm not) and went together well. Some fun custom mixing the camo scheme as the out-the-pot paints I had never seemed quite right.

Complete decalling disaster though. A perfect storm of ridiculously thin decals and my clumsy paws saw one of the serials literally come to pieces as it went on. Tried to fudge it by attempting to weather the whole bird far more than I originally planned to make he serial disaster look like fuselage damage but I don't think it entirely worked. A bit gutting as it was looking to come in really nicely initially. Not a total disaster but not what I had planned in my mind when I started. Oh well onward and upward... 

 

 

So there it is... 2017 will start with me finishing up a Japanese Oscar, then get cracking on an ancient P-47D kit (raised panel-lines and all). Will I dare look at the Lancaster taunting me from the high shelf at some point in 2017? I'm not so sure.

[Blastvader]

They all look great mucker.

 

I especially like the Beetle. 

[Ozzy]

As Blastvader said, nice beetle.

[Stosh65]

Still love the Beetle, glad to see the spit finally made it through. Sorry for starting the whole thing off again.