Greif8

The majority of today's bench time was spent working on small parts like the rudder, or applying further weathering effects. I spent a fair amount of time touching up the edges of the rudder where the decals either did not completely meet or had bad wrinkles (only one spot). I mixed the the blue and red colors to get a close match and carefully painted the edges. Most of the weathering was to the bottom of the aircraft. The diorama I have planned will be in the late winter/early spring timeframe and I am sure the bottoms of the aircraft got pretty dirty during that time of the season. Overall shot of the weathering of the bottom. I still need to do a couple of things, but it is 85%-90% done. I tapped a wide brush against my finger to get the splatter effect and then touched up the few areas that needed it. I also used the wide brush with a slightly thicker mix of earth color I used on the trailing edges and the bottom edge of the fuselage. Close up of the tailplanes. And a close up of the center forward underwing area. Side shot of the fuselage. I used two shades of a dirt colored enamel along the bottom edge. While the majority of the dirt was kept at the bottom, I did add some minor splatter effects higher up. My daughter was not happy the kangaroo got dirty! The rudder is not glued, just set in place. I wanted to see if both the shading I did under the stitching showed up and also if the dirtying up I did to the rudder meshed well with the rest of that area. Close up of the rudder. I am happy with how the dirt effects turned out.

Very nice work! Ernest

Outstanding build in every way Wayne! You did a brilliant job scratchbuilding and modifying to get the scene depicted realistic and interesting. Top Marks!! Ernest

Very nice work on the cockpit and pilot. I think you did a fine job with the detail painting. Ernest

Looking good Harry, well done pilot figure! Ernest

NIce (and for once easy!) modification that makes a huge difference Pete. Looking good man! Ernest

Welcome to the GB John! You'll be building like old before you know it man. Ernest

Thank you Andy! I wish I could have sourced some of the really nice Pheon decals, but alas all my efforts were for naught, so I went with one of the schemes in the box. I often let my 8 year old daughter pick the schemes I do and unsurprisingly she wanted the one with the kangaroo! I do have Pheons large decal sheet for the Sopwith Triplane, so if I end up building another one of those I am in good shape! Good luck with your SE-5a build; given your skill I am sure it will be a cracker. Ernest

The subject has pretty much dried. As you can see, even with the less than perfect lighting at my bench the end result is pretty solid. A good comparison is to look at the subject in the first photo of this installment. Distance 30 cm. Below is a side by side shot of the first head I painted using the technique that I favor and use almost all the time. As you can see the second head can hold its own here. The contrasts between shadows and highlights are stronger than the first subject, but that is not a bad thing and in fact can be desirable in certain dispaly situations. In the end it comes down to your preference, and how confident you are in your skills. Another shot with the lighting shining more directly on the subjects. That concludes the tutorial as far as painting figure's faces goes, unless someone wants to see how I struggle using acrylics to paint a face using the layering/glazing technique. I will be showing the two 1/32 scale heads that I have prepped to be repainted; I plan to do one of each in the two techniques I laid out above, but I don't plan to do a SBS. There are essentially no differences in the technique of painting a 1/32 or 1/35 scale face. The eyes are slightly more challenging in 1/32, but the blending is slightly easier so it evens out. I plan to move along to painting the clothing of figures. The first SBS will be a regurgitation of the one I did in my SE-5a build thread covering painting leather, but that's for tomorrow or the next day. Ernest

Thank you for the kind words Max! I have posted the final few shots of this episode below. Ernest

I spent a fair amount of time weathering the wings and fuselage of the aircraft today. The weathering phase comes much later when I build mono-wing aircraft, but one thing I have learned since beginning building WWI aircraft is that it is best to do any weathering type work prior to installing the upper wing. I wanted to try and get a bit of variance in the monotone PC-10 paint job and decided to do that mostly in three steps. I first sprayed the rib tape areas, and the areas of the fuselage that have wrinkles with Tamiya Smoke. This translucent color has many uses and I thought it would work well here. Next, I carefully airbrushed several light layers of matt varnish. My goal here was to vary the look from dead flat to a light sheen to a semi gloss applying those in areas I thought they would likely be. Finally I used some Tamiya weathering pastels to add highlights and fading to areas like the center of the rib tapes or the top of the fuselage to give the paint job a bit more of a 3-D look. I still have a fair amount of things to do, especially to the bottom of the aircraft, but the general weathering effects are done - with the exception of the inevitable touch ups. Overall photo that I had to enhance some as it was too dark. The PC-10 is somewhat lighter than this photo shows, but you can see the effects I talked about above. A little closer, you can get a better view of the highlights and shadows I was trying to get. This photo shows the shade of the PC-10 closer to how it looks without strong direct lighting. When I first sprayed the MRP PC-10 Late I thought it looked a little too dark, but that ended up being a good thing for the weathering process I chose. Here you can see some of the highlighting and shading I did to the wrinkles in the fuselage. I have to retouch the leather to give it some sheen. Close up of the port lower wing. The bottom of the starboard lower wing. I have a bit more work to do on the lower parts of the model. The tailplanes, I will be adding most of the "dirtying up" kind of weathering in this area of the build, as well as the undercarriage, so I went heavier with the Tamiya Smoke. Top of the upper wing. I faded this area somewhat more than the rest of the model. Close view of the upper wing.

I here you Max! I just posted an update to my figure painting tutorial and stuggled to take good pictures due to lighting conditions. Ernest

Following is another technique that can be used to paint faces. This technique is the one I started with when I decided I wanted to get better at figure painting. It is a bit easier to do than the one I use now, and I think it gives good solid results. The other advantages to this technique is that you don't have to have the really good Kolinski brushes, or their equivilent, to get great results and the subject painted dries pretty quickly. The main disadvantage is that this technique does not result in a more subtle blending effect. Below is another 1/35 scale head. The oil base coat has throughly dried and cured; important as the following technique uses oil washes. Alternately, you can leave the subject with the acrylic base coat. The brush in the photo is one of my synthetic brushes, a 3/0 as you can see. I use a brush like this to lay in the oil washes and make minor adjustments as required. The face after a light wash using the dark shadow color that is shown at the beginning of this thread. And after a second wash. I dried the first wash for 45-50 seconds with a blow dryer. After another short drying session, I applied a pin wash of the intermediate shadow that is shown at the beginning of the thread. A have now added small dots of the lightest highlight color seen at the beginning of the thread; you can easily see where I have added the paint, especially if you can zoom the image. Less is more here as you won't need very much paint to get the effect. The brush is clean and dry - that is important - and will be used to blend the paint. Starting at the highest point, the forehead, gently brush in a downward stroke once or twice just touching the surface. Do this in each area that the highlight is added, make sure you use very light pressure and always brush in a downward motion. This will blend the paint into the shadow areas and spread it slightly into the areas that have the base flesh color. Blended. Subject seen from 30 cms distance. The eyes are laid in using the exact same technique with the fine tip of a broken toothpick. The whites are done first. This photo was taken from circa 10 cms away with a macro lens. Note how "rough" the transitions are in the colors in this extreme close up and compare the look to the above photo. As I have pointed out before, it takes practice to not be put off by how your work looks when zoomed in at high magnification. If you eradicate the transitions so that they look smooth and nice at high magnification you will not have any transitions at all when viewed at normal viewing distance of 30-60 cms. Blue irises have been added; this guy is going to have blond hair. The following two photos were taken at circa 20 and 40 cms respectively. Pink has been applied to the cheeks and lower lip exactly the way as in the first technique. Seen from circa 30 cms distance after face is complete. I used Tamiya XF-59 Desert Yellow for the blond hair painting just one thin coat. I did this because the base color of the head meshes well with a blond hair tone. You can see that there is still some decent shading. I used a medium brown wash to enhance the shadow areas. And then I dry brush 3 successively light layers of highlights. The subject ready to go into the drying box for a few hours. The paint drys very quickly using this technique. I should be able to post a photo of the finished head in 3-4 hours.

Very nice build, I like the camo scheme a lot! Ernest

Cool and very well executed build Max. Can't wait to see more photos. Ernest

Simply stunning as always Miloslav! Ernest

Continued excellent work Pete! I'm sure the cockpit will be a feast for the eyes. Ernest

The cockpit looks good Gary, you have got it right with the seatbelts - something I always do wrong. I think you did a fine job with the engine ignition wiring. Ernest

Thank you for the comments and kind words guys! Ringleheim, I agree completely about letting the linseed oil bleed out of the oil paint before using it. I actually mentioned this early in the tutorial, as it is something I always do. This will be a long running thread - at least I plan for it to be - where I will cover different techniques in a step-by-step process. Most of the time the oils do dry overnight, as I tend to apply them in thin layers and use a drying box that I made. Quang, I always undercoat figures with acrylic paints before applying oil paint. I talk about this fairly early in my first post in this thread and discussed it in some detail when I did the step-by-step for painting the leather coats of the figures I will be dispalying in my "In Progress" build thread for the S.E.-5a. I tend to use Lifecolor acrylics for this, but I also use Tamiya Acrylics; not a true water based acrylic, but I like the paint for several reasons. Ernest

I think you will find the decals are pretty easy to work with. The ones you are using have already been cut to size and shape, and joining the individual decals will be pretty easy. I have used Aviattic lozenge decals of this type on three previous builds and thought they were all easy to work with. Ernest

Thank you Mike! I think it is more difficult to pull off a leather look with acrylics than it is using oils - but that could all be down to me in the end. I did consider using oils here, but I just got the build going again after a several week delay and did not want to kill my momentum waiting for a couple of days for the oils to dry. And I wanted to see if I could bring off the "oil look" using acrylics. Ernest

Landing gear looks fantastic Andy! Ernest

You are really doing a great job here Quang! This looks like a very nice kit indeed. Ernest

Welcome to the GB, the cockpit work looks very nice. Are you going to build a Zero produced by Mitsubishi or Nakajimi? Ernest

Thank you Tom! I used MRP's PC-10 Late. Happy New Year to you as well! Interestingly, my reply to you was my 2023rd post. Ernest