Fanes

That's tempting!

Fair point Quang, it's definitely the blue. If I only had any spare decals to cut accordingly and replace the ones already applied My best idea so far: dabble grey and brown oils over the blue regions to make them less vibrant.

To oil filter, or not to filter I'll start with two black on black photos: That's where I'm at with a black panel line wash (barely visible, as it should be) and with a flat coat (Gunze UV cut - great stuff) applied. I plan on applying a dead flat acrylic coat to the cowling and all the panels in front of the windscreen. Before that, I'd usually put on an oil filter to get some varaition and to pull the camo colours together. Right now the decals seem a tad too bright to my eye. What do you think?

Great work Max, I'm enjoying and taking notes for the time I dare to start my first all resin kit. How did you paint the Townend ring?

Wow - thank you so much for posting your work here. It's a pleasure to watch! Is it me, or do some of the mottles on the port fuselage look darker than the rest?

+1

If been postponing this post (ha :D) like forever. I'm talking about applying filters over the black to enhance the contrast I laid down with the mottle. Quang's advice with the clear red and blue proved to be an excellent idea but was almost impossible to capture in a photograph. Well, here's as good as it got. The Red gave not only a slight orange sheen, but also made the brown mottle more visible. Both disappeared in the photo above... The upper parts and their blue filter worked a little more obvious, since they simply needed the blueish mottle to pop a little more. I hope, you get the idea. The high gloss black really was an annoying dust magnet and way too refelctive for the camera - reminds me: I need a better lighting setup! The flat coat was applied today and I'm hoping for some better light conditions tomorrow to take some pictures for you mates.

Agreed!

Top notch work on the cockpit Quang. I especially like, what you did with the seatbelt-harness-thingy! Looking very much forward to the painting stage

Stickers applied Now with Quang on my heels, I had the motivation (and also time) to apply the decals. I read quite some horror stories about ICM decals being too thin, sometimes they shatter and most of the time they're supposed to fold over. Well, I didn't have any similar problems. They were put on with quite a lot of water, then the backing paper was pulled away in situ. Even without decal softer, they levelled themself smoothly. With some Daco medium applied, the panel lines and the little domes on the cowl were no issue. The ungrateful macro reveals more imperfections in the gloss coat and black, than with the carrier films.. Even without a protective clear coat above, the edges aren't that visible. Overall standing so far: The last clear coat is drying as I type these lines. The next steps will be weathering with some filters, a black panel line wash and maybe some oils to tone down the bright decals.

Big thanks to Tom, Jeroen, Andreas and of course everyone who's watching this build! I had been absent from the bench for work reasons, then family reasons and finally because of a short vacation in northern Italy. The last two days were used to gloss coat the little Fiat with my trusted Tamiya X-20 and levelling thinner. Photos will follow as soon, as I have the decals on.

Fantastic work John! I really like what you did with weathering on this one. Especially the filthy panel lines behind the engine and the more restraint ones on the rest of the airframe. The raised rivets is the icing on the cake (at least for me) Joachim PS: Finally got that F.24 camera printed for you. Will text you, as soon as I get to shipping it.

Grey over blue for me!

How did I miss this beautiful and dirty Mirage? Fantastic work - will use that as reference for my small scale one.

I'll try it again with: Eye in the Sky - all recon aircraft (not only photo recon, but maybe sth like FAC and anything with a recon pod? Since I need to challenge myself to do my first natural metal finish: Shiny and chrome - all nmf aircraft and maybe to widen the scope: silver paint and aluminum dope is allowed as well

Max - would it be a good idea to modify that lower panel from SW? Maybe you can use PE bezels from Airscale to make it look less like a flat panels with holes?

With a little bit of fiddling and moving the mask around a dozen times to get a somewhat horizontal appearance, the markings were sprayed on with a dark black tone and RLM23 red: Of course the macro photo shows a little mishap on the fuselage band. Will have to repair that before applying the gloss coat. Which is okay since the air around here is quite dry and dusty and the black Falco seems to be a dust magnet. In the meantime I paid some attention to the prop. The gloss black base was followed by Alclad Aluminum, hairspray and then a mixture of Tamiya Nato Black and semi gloss black with some mottle. The back of the blades was chipped mostly on the leading edge and the tips, although I'm not a 100% happy. It might be a tad too heavy.

That sounds disgusting

I should really mix my own Off White for the next build

Fantastic idea - I will keep this in mind! Hehe thanks Kev. That was more born out of trouble with getting a decent finish without loads of paint, rather than out of a genius' mind. Plus the pure Off White looks way too green to my eye.

That's interesting! I already wondered why the fuselage was looking dead flat in all the pictures. But before we go into gloss and/or flat, some white had to be applied. Since I had quite some problems with getting a good opacity without 42 coats - looking at you MRP Insignia White - trying Tamiya`s new(ish) liquid surface primer in white seemed like a good choice. I wasn't disappointed. It went down super smooth thinned with levelling thinner (around 60%) and I only needed a very thin coat + mottling. Same game for the underwing insignia Everything was then blended in with Gunze's Off White and here we go: and so much better than any decal (even though it's slightly skew) Next up: the numers on the fuselage's sides, but I will give the white a full day to cure to not lift any paint with the masks.

Black Falco(n) I didn't want to wait any longer and started blending all the mottle in with very thin coats of Tamiya Satin Black and Gunze Tyre Black. Basically it was levelling thinner with a drop of colour - or dare I say: absence of light - in it. To get halfway decent pictures I used a dark background and lots of light, but the shiny surface isn't easy to capture. the uppers still have their blueish hue The transition to a more grey/green black and the brownish underside: It may look a little bit harsh in some places, but this is intentional since the markings are mostly white or colourful. Speaking about markings - the masks are drawn and ready for cutting: The next update will have some white on

Thank you very much for the input! That's quite a lot to think and reflect about. We will see how much I can really implement this time. But there might be another black nightfighter in the future (did someone say Hawker Hurricane?) No - please don't delete anything! I'm very happy to have a lively and fruitful discussion here That's a very interesting approach and even though it's hard to see in the photos (I guess light backgrounds aren't helpful ), there's definitely something going on on the belly section.

Black basing Black Usually I would start my painting with the standard black basing approach, but the contrast between black and something a little lighter than pure black makes this quite useless. Fortunately Quang's P-40 build, where completely different colours were used to locally change the tonality of the overcoat, got me thinking. The idea was now to create some varation based on where on the airplane we are. As you can see in the background of the horrible picture abvoe - the Falco still looks black despite all the colour added! More into the details! The undersides recieved spots with Tamiya Dark Brown and MRP Verde Olivia to more or less refelct the ground below the aircraft and to already get a bit of dirt on. Oddly enough the pictures only show the brown mottle - the green one is there, I promise! As we transition over the sides I used the final overcoat colour (a 3/2 mixture of Rubber Black and semi gloss Black) and MRP Oxford Blue (blue skies above). The wings have their ribs highlighted with a more grayish colour additionally to the blue mottle. Now, I will blend all the colours together and I really need to look for a darker background to make the different shades of black more visible.