To Stencil or not to Stencil?

[JohnT]

I'd like to get the opinions of you guys on something that I have wondered about for some time. It all started several years ago when I bought decals for a 1/48 Phantom I no longer have. I bought the after market decals and saw a huge stencil sheet. I built and painted the model and applied the first sheet for the aircraft and got to town on the stencil sheet. Trouble was the more stencils I added the worse I thought the model looked. The aircraft started to look like a kid with a bad outbreak of acne.

I thought about this and realised that you don't see the stencils on the real thing until you start to look for them. I guess they should be on a model to be accurate but at the expense of the model "looking right"??? - whatever "Looking right" may mean !

Any thoughts or opinions to guide/assist/help - even argue !!!

John

[pigsty]

I think it depends partly on the type of aircraft. The Phantom was notoriously stencil-dense - McDonnell took the standard US practice of writing instructions everywhere (starting with "this is an airplane" and "this way up") and seemed to go mad with the things. Some are more than a foot across so they're fairly obvious; others are little more than a blob so even on the real thing, they don't show all that clearly. But the Phantom was an extreme example - all US aircraft look as though the manual has been reprinted on the paintwork. True fidelity requires that you add every stencil you can find, but then you run into the scale effect problem, which has two components:

* when you look at a real aircraft, you see a lot of painted surface, and you can't see all the stencils at once, because the aircraft is fifty or sixty feet long and you're too close. When you look at a model, it's only a foot long, so you can see everything at once. That makes the stencils stand out more.

* with the best will in the world, the colours in stencil decals tend to be quite sharp, so they stand out. It's fairly easy to correct for scale with your paintwork; less so with decals.

If you look at photographs of aircraft taken at a distance that replicates the usual separation of eye from model, the stencils aren't all that apparent, but they are there, and you can sometimes detect the effect they have on the overall colours. So you could say that you have to add something, or the finished product will lack a certain flourish. On the other hand, I've found that if you leave a load off (or if they were never provided in the first place), you can still turn out a decent result. One or two obvious ones can fool the eye into thinking there's more there than there actually is - say, the red warning triangles for ejector seats, or the bright black-and-yellow rescue panels.

[alex]

well, it depends.... one of the best aircraft models I've ever seen had a whole bunch of stencils. (not sure anymore it it was a F-14 or F-15 in 1:32). Stenciling was to that point that every removable cover had its own number, and its counterpart on the fixed place of the aircraft. it really looked like the "real thing". But - and that's the point! - it was done perfectly. the stencils weren't just black, they were nicely toned down. No silvering anywhere. It was like you said - you didn't notice, unless you start looking for them.

I agree that a whole lot of ink black and silvering "DON'T LIFT/PUSH/STEP"-decals would do more harm than good.

Alex

[Mike]

I remember the number of stencils on the Skyshark I built a few years ago.... seemed a lot back then, but when you look at the pictures now, they don't really stand out much, but they DO add a certain something... an authenticity if you like to the build.

My take on the matter is to persevere... and do British Phantoms, as they're not so dense on the stencils

[JohnT]

I remember the number of stencils on the Skyshark I built a few years ago.... seemed a lot back then, but when you look at the pictures now, they don't really stand out much, but they DO add a certain something... an authenticity if you like to the build.

My take on the matter is to persevere... and do British Phantoms, as they're not so dense on the stencils

Thanks for advice guys. Lovely Skyshark Mike and I can see what you mean re stencils.

I guess that means I try being subtle and discreet - well I can try !!!!

John