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Revell (CH) 1/72 de Havilland Sea Vixen FAW1.5ish. - FINISHED


Ngantek

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On 11/28/2022 at 5:31 AM, Ngantek said:

20221128_100604

 

 

 

Nothing makes me feel like a rank amateur at this modelling lark like a nice smooth finish and those little sponges in the wheel wells, which I've never had it together enough to use.

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On 28/11/2022 at 12:11, AliGauld said:

You've done a power of work on this one so far.

Just had a catch up and am looking forward to further progress.

Great stuff.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

Thanks Alistair. In true fashion I've made a bit of a meal of this one, then got sidetracked with experiments. Still hoping to get it out of the way for the new year!

 

 

7 hours ago, mark.au said:

So far so good, I like where you’re heading on this.

I'm not so sure I share your optimism, but since you got me into this shading milarky, I'm going to brazenly blame the inevitable car crash on you! 😄 

Light, subtle shading of the type you excel at is apparently not particularly compatible with my 'first approach to any problem is with a sledgehammer' style. 

 


 

22 minutes ago, Procopius said:

 

Nothing makes me feel like a rank amateur at this modelling lark like a nice smooth finish and those little sponges in the wheel wells, which I've never had it together enough to use.

Ah, it's just tactical lighting to hide the liberal coverage of orange peel. I had at it with some sanding sponges in an attempt to fake the lovely sheen that you seem to always get with your colourcoats, but just ended up revealing more styrene and making it greyer! 

 

As for those little sponges, notice that getting one in every wheel bay was evidently beyond the limits of my endurance.

 

Thanks for popping by everyone anyway, at the very least it will serve as guide as what not to do!

Andy

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1 minute ago, Ngantek said:

Ah, it's just tactical lighting to hide the liberal coverage of orange peel. I had at it with some sanding sponges in an attempt to fake the lovely sheen that you seem to always get with your colourcoats, but just ended up revealing more styrene and making it greyer! 

 

Colourcoats are in fact a lovely matte finish, the sheen is from extremely enthusiastic gloss coating, because like a magpie, I love shiny things.

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5 hours ago, Procopius said:

 

Colourcoats are in fact a lovely matte finish, the sheen is from extremely enthusiastic gloss coating, because like a magpie, I love shiny things.

Would that I could ever achieve a gloss cote I too would do the same!

 

4 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

Nice shading effects so far Andy, like it, looking good.

Chris

You're very kind Chris. I think 'rough experiments in shading' is about right!

 

So I've had some other colours out. It's kinda hard to show the effects because photos seem to wash out any colour distinction and it all looks like shades of the same colour. Please forgive the excessively detailed post, it's really for my reference more than anything. Essentially I cut with some Sky, shaded some areas and did some streaks. Next I went for some 'colder' shades by adding some blue, then gradually added more and more grey, layering on darker and darker effects, highlighting certain areas, a few weathering effects you can see on photos and whatnot.  So to make comparison easy, we were here last:

20221128_105322

Various other shades added brings us to this:

20221129_221031

which was then toned down with a heavily thinned white overspray:

 

20221129_223414

With the mark 1 eyeball, I'd say the effect is rather more pronounced in person, but yes, its a finish that could be achieved much quicker with less effort. Something I'd noticed in the past but not had the gumption to learn from, is that when you uniformly 'tone down' with overspray, you also lose definition. It tends to look less deliberate and more just badly applied paint. I also find you want to tone certain things down a lot and some not at all, and that's not particuarly easy to achieve with even mist cotes.

 

I think the ideal is to have the bal cohon relevant anatomical features to get the right balance first time, then apply the shades over the top without the 'blending' too much. That of course requires rather more airbrush control than I've ever managed, but I think the effects can occasionally look pretty good 'raw'. The issue I had, was the base layer was so dark, that a lot of lightening was needed to blend it, and despite the shading being a little more wiped out than I ideally would like, it still is a little too on the grey side all over. White is not very forgiving in that respect I think. I might even next time start from white and add colours and shading as appropriate, given how much more difficult it is to 'whiten'.

 

I think given that, I'm mildly tempted to go back and sharpen some of those effects again over the top.

 

Anyhoo, here's the same progression on the wings:

20221129_221053 20221129_223509

Again, the effect is maybe a little more obvious (and with more colour variation) in person.

 

I think I've learned enough from this to move on. It looks serviceable, and if I've learned anything from previous models, it's that techniques don't just get learned in a binary fashion; they get a little better (or if you're me, about evens a little worse) every time until hopefully you're one day achieving something approaching what you're looking for.

 

Question now is whether to risk sanding back a bit to smooth any inconsistencies. Otherwise, I think mask up when it's dry and then do the same with the EDSG; I expect it will be a very different situation with such a dark colour by comparison.

 

Anyway, progress at least!

 

Cheers,

Andy

 

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5 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

I like the preshading effects you have created on the fuselage underside Andy .  Looks great

Chris

 

28 minutes ago, AliGauld said:

Nice effects Andy.

Looking good.

 

 

Cheers,

Alistair

Thanks guys. I'm not particularly taken by the results, but I'm always happy if it's serviceable and I have ideas for how to do it better next time. I think I've put my finger on why I don't particularly take to the preshade technique at least. This one wasn't even supposed to be preshaded, but ended up that way! I've realised I forgot to do the off-white canopy band, so might try and reinstate some definition while I have the paint out.

 

36 minutes ago, Adam Poultney said:

This really makes me realise even more how much we need a decent sea vixen in this scale. Come on Airfix, absolutely their sort of thing.... hopefully 2023 will bring us a nice FAW1/2 kit with good shape

Yeah I agree, but I'm not holding my breath. In some ways, it's in the worst place of having no 'really good' model, but is quite well served by well tooled mainstream or decentish shorter run options, I imagine it's hard to justify the market for another one. 

 

The FAW1 is probably the best bet since the CH kits are not super common these days, but the existence of that tool for potential rerelease, and the fact that I would guess a lot of the research and scan work that Airfix has already done is not applicable to that mark aren't strong points in its favour.

 

The FAW2 of course has the CH and this kit easily available, along with the SH/MPM/Xtrakit line, and of course the various frog derivatives, as I'm sure you know. None of which are perfect, but they do occupy a lot of potential demand.

 

But yeah if they did I'd probably buy three! 

 

Andy

 

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I think you’ve done a very good job at a used white paint effect.  I’d be happy with that if it were mine.  The randomness is the accuracy in my opinion, that’s what I strive for in my paint work, and they way you achieved it is how I do it too.  I like it.

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18 hours ago, mark.au said:

I think you’ve done a very good job at a used white paint effect.  I’d be happy with that if it were mine.  The randomness is the accuracy in my opinion, that’s what I strive for in my paint work, and they way you achieved it is how I do it too.  I like it.

Thanks Mark that's high praise indeed. If nothing else, it's a little more interesting than uniform white, I guess I won't really know how it's turned out until it's against EDSG, had oils spilled all over it and all the mess hidden under varnish.

 

Not much time yesterday so I contented myself with getting ahead of the masking job. Before that though, the off-white of the canopy frame that I forgot, needed to go down before I could do the EDSG later. This is when I remembered that, when masking the canopy at silly in the morning, I'd forgotten to mask for the earlier frame with crossing white and EDSG bars over the canopy centreline.

 

 

The sensible thing would've been to completely re-mask, but never one to miss an opportunity to lengthen- and simultaneously mess up- any given job by trying to cut corners, I opted to try and slice a gap through the tape and masking fluid to put a new pair of guide lines down. It was, as one might expect, only moderately successful. The middle bar isn't undercoated in cockpit black, but ahh too lazy.

 

20221201_115209

 

I had at the flaps as well which made them correspondingly more dodgy, before finishing the masking job, hopefully. I've actually used the expensive tape all over and done a proper job, seeing as I usually just do the edges in the knowledge that only an incompetent fool would manage to get paint on the middle. Then get paint all over the middle. The Revell instructions (I guess the paint diagrams are freshly revellified rather than CH holdovers?) are, frankly, a little lazy (by which I mean very wrong) on various locations of the top bottom demarcations, which are pretty easy to see with a 20 second google search. 

 

EDSG soon I hope.

 

Andy

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Not much time this evening, but a quick wipe with an IPA-damp cloth, a brief attempt to junk the thing with a scriber and Hasegawa template tool, then... the bit I always look forward to. Behold! The moment of EDSG is nigh!

 

20221201_202443

 

Again Gunze Mr Color (this time C333) thinned with MLT about 50/50 straight onto plastic. This stuff is terrific. Nice even satin finish, even with me at the helm. No time for shading, but probably better to take a photo now before I ruin it. In anycase I need to do a bit of thinking and looking at photos to decide how to shade. My view is slightly that I'm primarily trying to mimic the uneven surface with shading (plus some discolour and panelling for variety), and my recent experiments have been rather unsuccessfully using stripes and blobs of lighter immediately adjacent to darker in the hopes of giving the surface some wobble, denting, mild canning, wrinkling, overlapping panels where instead we have panel lines; that kind of thing. Of course the surface finish was rather better on these than, say, a beaten up spitfire, so it's probably sensible to use as light a touch as possible.

 

Looking ahead, I'm still not really there on scheme. I don't have any decals for a FAW1, but conceivably I might be able to cobble together some underwing serials from what I can find lying around. Original plan was to shamelessly slap on the kit decals and hope no one noticed do some really thorough research, but honestly, I'm not really that fussed about telling a story here, given the likelyhood is I'll get it very wrong without putting a lot of time and effort into it.

 

One thing for any Sea Vixeniados out there, I've noticed those 'iconic' red 'no-step' markings splattered all over the upper fuselage never seem to show up nearly as much in photos, partly I don't doubt, due to weathering and partly because I suspect decals in kit size are going to be necessarily out of scale. I had planned overspray them lightly with EDSG to dull them down a bit, but a lot of photos of FAW1s don't seem to have them at all... or at least I can't make them out. Have a look at some of these (if you're also bored and trying to procrastinate from work) and see if it's just my bad eyes, the camera or they really aren't there:

 

 

Really it's an excuse to waste some time watching Sea Vixens landing on carriers, which to my mind, is the coolist single thing in all of aviation.

 

XJ481 in storage at the FAA museum has none either (credit James Thomas, happy to remove)

de Havilland Sea Vixen FAW.1 XJ481

 

Anyway I'd rather leave them off if I can justify it, I think overall it looks better without.

 

There we go

 

Andy

 

 

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3 hours ago, AliGauld said:

ESDG what's not to like.

 

My thoughts exactly. It probably says more about my character than I'm strictly comfortable with, that I can't get enough of 'very dark grey'.

 

 

3 hours ago, AliGauld said:

f you want to leave off the decals then do it.

It's your kit you make how it pleases you.

It will look awesome either way.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

Thanks Alistair, for enabling my laziness! There or not on the real thing, it will certainly look closer to what I can see in photos if I leave them off, so I suppose there's a good enough reason there.

 

Watching that last video again (which I've found is confusingly cut, following aircraft around by splicing together sequential shots of different aircraft), I have found one that matches the configuration I've built, and has numbers that can be spliced together from what's available in the kit. I'll take it!

 

Andy

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23 hours ago, Ngantek said:

My view is slightly that I'm primarily trying to mimic the uneven surface with shading (plus some discolour and panelling for variety), and my recent experiments have been rather unsuccessfully using stripes and blobs of lighter immediately adjacent to darker in the hopes of giving the surface some wobble, denting, mild canning, wrinkling, overlapping panels where instead we have panel lines; that kind of thing.


That’s an interesting approach.  I’m not trying to do that on mine, I’m trying to represent the variations in the paint finish caused by age, wear and grime.  An art teacher once told me nothing is the same colour all the way across its surface.

 

23 hours ago, Ngantek said:

I've noticed those 'iconic' red 'no-step' markings splattered all over the upper fuselage never seem to show up nearly as much in photos


I always go with what I see (and can reason) over what is supposed to be there.  If you don’t see the markings on the real thing, having paid due attention of course, then they aren’t there.

 

That EDSG looks to be perfect.  The whole is looking very imposing now, it’s quite an airframe, isn’t it?

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Andy,

 

Lovely finish on both white and EDSG. I'd echo what Mark said - I be very happy if was mine!

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

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12 hours ago, mark.au said:


That’s an interesting approach.  I’m not trying to do that on mine, I’m trying to represent the variations in the paint finish caused by age, wear and grime.  An art teacher once told me nothing is the same colour all the way across its surface.

 


I always go with what I see (and can reason) over what is supposed to be there.  If you don’t see the markings on the real thing, having paid due attention of course, then they aren’t there.

 

That EDSG looks to be perfect.  The whole is looking very imposing now, it’s quite an airframe, isn’t it?

Thanks Mark, we'll see how it turns out. I've struggled a little to get that kind of fine speckle of colour and shade variation you see with the airbrush, and thought maybe I'd get better results with oils for that kind of thing.

 

I'm still very much at the point where I don't know what I'm doing so have tried bringing up pictures and 'painting by numbers'. Often looking at the real thing, the variation in colour I see is from light showing up surface relief, which is of course light source specific, but is not something that virtually any plastic model shows. I actually want to try out some whacky ideas on an old raised detail model so some point, using thick primer and masking to see what happens if you try to 'create' that texture.

 

Anyway, good thing that I took the picture before I junk it! Thanks for your help. They are as you say, very imposing, I really love the silhouette.

 

3 hours ago, Dunny said:

Andy,

 

Lovely finish on both white and EDSG. I'd echo what Mark said - I be very happy if was mine!

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

Thanks Roger, been impressed with these paints really, not much I've had to do with it!

 

Fell down a bit of a sea vixen rabbit hole last night, following squadrons and carriers and aircraft serials. These aircraft got around. It's poignant that so many that you see in the videos were destined for accidents and these aircraft were certainly not kind to their aircrew. 

 

I'm planning on using markings from one of the aircraft in the third (IWM) video, which matches the configuration I've built, and also has markings that I can stitch together from the kit decals. From what I can tell, like many sea Vixens, it seems to regularly appear somewhere, maybe have a prang and then turn up in a different squadron a few years later.

Screenshot_20221203_090301_YouTube

 

These aircraft seem to have been loaded with a pair of (I guess) RP3 rockets on each pylon, with an odd orangish (?) Firestreak outboard. Can anyone help me with the colours on the missile, since I'm colourblind? I'd guess the stripes are brown for the rocket motor, is there some blue there to show it's a training round? And the body is what Eau de nil perhaps?

Screenshot_20221203_090035_YouTube

 

They seem to be landing without the rockets (which is good because I don't have any spares without the big bulb head warheads) but with the firestreak still on it's pylon. I do have a CH sea venom in the 'blue Jay' boxing, so guess I could steal those for the firestreak?

Screenshot_20221203_090451_YouTube Screenshot_20221203_090237_YouTube

 

Cheers,

Andy

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Ooooooo good to see the EDSG go on Andy  looking forward to the effects for variation in shade etc.  It's a shame it's not 48th scale as I have lots of FAW.1 decals left over from my build I could have sent you, but nothing in 72nd scale as far as I am aware. 

The videos were great to watch, thanks for posting too.

Cracking work 

Chris

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12 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

Ooooooo good to see the EDSG go on Andy  looking forward to the effects for variation in shade etc.  It's a shame it's not 48th scale as I have lots of FAW.1 decals left over from my build I could have sent you, but nothing in 72nd scale as far as I am aware. 

The videos were great to watch, thanks for posting too.

Cracking work 

Chris

No worries Chris. I think I'll be alright with what I have, but thanks.

 

 

Had a mess around with shading today. Probably a bit heavy, since these aircraft were pretty even and clean, but it's all practice and hopefully it will add some... dunno... something after all the other layers have gone on.

 

20221203_235333

 

On the bad side, I manage to thwack the airbrush tip when cleaning ; and being close up work, it didn't have the spray guard on :wall:🤣. I think I'll have to wait on a new nozzle before any more spray work can continue. I guess now's the time to have a sit and think, and wonder what's next... potentially some decals onto the bare paint, maybe after a fine sand... The black radome needs painting of course, but perhaps there's still progress to be made in the short term while the brush is down.

Cheers,

Andy

 

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2 hours ago, Ngantek said:

Had a mess around with shading today. Probably a bit heavy, since these aircraft were pretty even and clean, but it's all practice and hopefully it will add some... dunno... something after all the other layers have gone on.

 

I like it a lot!  It'll tone down a tad after the finishing coats are on.

 

2 hours ago, Ngantek said:

potentially some decals onto the bare paint, maybe after a fine sand...

 

Tricky, but doable.  With a bit of care, and assuming the nozzle isn't completely blown out, the needle can be straightened sufficiently to apply a clear gloss for the decals (ask me how I know...).

 

Looking good overall.  

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Me too looks great, love the tonal variation and think it looks fab.  

I use watered down (about 40%), Johnsons Klear to apply decals to not so glossy surfaces, but can sometimes still get a slight silvering here and there.  

Great work 

Chris

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On 03/12/2022 at 09:18, Ngantek said:

an odd orangish (?) Firestreak outboard. Can anyone help me with the colours on the missile, since I'm colourblind? I'd guess the stripes are brown for the rocket motor, is there some blue there to show it's a training round? And the body is what Eau de nil perhaps?

Looking at the colour of the missile vs the tow tractor and upper fuselage of the plane guard Wessex I'd go with BS381c 351 Golden Yellow

The colour could be indicative of a development or a training round, it's not a live round which would have been white.

I can't see any painted stripes on them, what appears as two broad stripes forward of the pylon are the missile proximity fuse windows 

firestreak-missile.jpg

 

On 03/12/2022 at 09:18, Ngantek said:

I do have a CH sea venom in the 'blue Jay' boxing, so guess I could steal those for the firestreak?

Blue Jay was the development name for what became Firestreak in service - so yes, they're essentially the same

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18 hours ago, mark.au said:

 

I like it a lot!  It'll tone down a tad after the finishing coats are on.

 

 

Tricky, but doable.  With a bit of care, and assuming the nozzle isn't completely blown out, the needle can be straightened sufficiently to apply a clear gloss for the decals (ask me how I know...).

 

Looking good overall.  

Thanks Mark. The guide you posted a few months ago has been invaluable. I'm still sitting in front of a 'clean' model with an airbrush and absolutely no idea what to do, but while more weathered than the photos, it does look less toylike than it did at least to my eye. 

 

I did have a go with some other colours but added enough to affect the shade, which turned out to be way more than was needed to affect the hue, so was way too obvious. So this one is just toned up and down. 

 

The nozzle looks to be folded up from the inside so I'll have a hack at pushing it back down if I can find something thin enough but it's pretty irretrievable I think. Nevermind, the cost of my heavy handedness. 

 

12 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

Me too looks great, love the tonal variation and think it looks fab.  

I use watered down (about 40%), Johnsons Klear to apply decals to not so glossy surfaces, but can sometimes still get a slight silvering here and there.  

Great work 

Chris

Thanks Chris, I keep meaning to try this technique but always chicken out. I'll see how long on the nozzle... to be honest I've gone decals straight onto dodgy surfaces with just tamiya markfit strong and it's been okay so far, so I was originally intended to skip the gloss here too... bit am feeling a little chicken right now!

 

12 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

Looking at the colour of the missile vs the tow tractor and upper fuselage of the plane guard Wessex I'd go with BS381c 351 Golden Yellow

The colour could be indicative of a development or a training round, it's not a live round which would have been white.

I can't see any painted stripes on them, what appears as two broad stripes forward of the pylon are the missile proximity fuse windows 

firestreak-missile.jpg

 

Blue Jay was the development name for what became Firestreak in service - so yes, they're essentially the same

Thanks Dave, thats a huge help. As you can see I know basically nothing about this subject. The online instructions for the barracuda kits mention that the Navy sometimes even had yellow firestreaks, so that certainly sounds like a good suggestion.

 

I would've spend many an hour going round in circles trying to learn about paint bands, if you hadn't pointed out the fuse windows. 

 

That office is so cool! Looks like a bo diddley on the wall as well.

 

Thanks so much for your help!

 

Andy

 

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Been sitting on this one while I wait for a new nozzle (incidentally had it all in pieces this evening; there's definitely something jammed or bent in there, I think it's a dead loss).

 

Then it occurred to me, rather late in the day, that the bottom is gloss already so whether I choose to clear coat the EDSG, the white is fine for decals. So made a start on them. It's going to be a long process I think; what with the serial mish mash, the number of stencils, and the fact that I'm constantly scrolling through videos and pictures to see how they match to the earlier mark (turns out fairly well, I'm fortunate that Sea Vixen markings seem to have been pretty uniform throughout)! So far just butchered the wing serials (post war under wing serials I have form on, and not the good kind of form), and the fuel tanks. Made a bit of a hash of the carrier film for the serials, so that might be a gloss-and-sand job. Still debating whether it's worth (or possible) to try and similarly shuffle in the number for the tiny serial on the tail.

20221206_224047

 

I've also been cautiously eyeing up the stolen Firestreak (also Cyber Hobby it turns out). The fins look overlong to me, and I think will need trimming back as shown. Not quite sure how to approach the proximity windows, but there are some red top kit decals that might be appropriate for the (suspected) dashed band aft of the stabilisers at least.

20221206_224219

I'll need to scratch up an 'adaptor rail' to mate to the vixen underwing stores.

 

That it really, I might finish the cockpit and jam the canopy on while I'm waiting as well.

 

Andy

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