Tiger Models Cute Series P-40 Warhawk (& Others)

[Thunnus]

This was a diversionary build while I was between normal subjects.  It's a snap-together kit designed for younger modelers but it was a pretty good kit in its own right.  The model went together very easily and fit was great.  The only plastic that I added was a scratchbuilt gun sight, the fishing line aerial and the flange around the drop tank.  I also scratched harnesses using foil and PE hardware from the spares box.  I didn't like the stylized eye decals that the kit provided so I masked and painted the eyes myself.  I gave the plane a full weathering treatment including playing with oil filtering for the first time.  You can discern the resultant tonal variations in some of the pictures.  It was a fun quick build.

 

Edited September 17, 2016 by Thunnus

[Martinnfb]

Awesome, it looks like you had lots of fun with this little thingie. Thank for sharing.

Cheers

Martin

[Shawn M]

wow!

looks great...really need to get these in my stash

[dodgem37]

That looks better than my to-scale builds.  Love everything about what you've done.  Tonal values, chipping, highlights, lowlights.  Maybe gun powder staining?

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[Thunnus]

Thanks guys!  A quickie but a fun one!  I didn't pick up any other ones in this particular series but got the Meng B-17, which is similar.  Will do that one later.  Next is a "proper" 1/48 Mustang that I'm doing for a friend.

[LSP_Kevin]

That looks awesome!

 

Kev

[Iain]

Ace - I think we could all benefit from having a go at one of these!

 

Iain

[BloorwestSiR]

 

 

Great build, I really like the weathering.

 

 

Ace - I think we could all benefit from having a go at one of these!

 

Iain

Absolutely Iain! They're a quick piece of fun modelling and great for a potentially stress free build.

 

I just completed a Dragon Saladin armoured car for the very same reason. It was OOB, two colours and done in less than a week.

 

Carl

Edited July 4, 2016 by BloorwestSiR

[Thunnus]

Here is another in the series of Cute Kits by Tiger Models. This is the Bf109 kit converted to a Bf109F.  Thanks to ScanmanDan for sharing his builds and pointing me to the conversion kit.  The spinner from the conversion is on the small side and made the Bf109 look like an Avia S-199 so I used a 1/32 109G spinner and chopped it like Dan did.

 

 

 

[Artful69]

...  This is the Bf109 kit converted to a Bf109F.  Thanks to ScanmanDan for sharing his builds and pointing me to the conversion kit ...

 

 

I didn't know there was a designated conversion for this kit?

 

Nice work btw

 

Rog

Edited September 17, 2016 by Artful69

[chukw]

I really like these- great work, John!  I have the He177 set aside for a fun "decompression" exercise.  Cheers!

[Martinnfb]

Absolutely über cool!

[BloorwestSiR]

Looks great. Nice to see more of them being built.

 

Carl

[Zero77]

So cute !

The painting and weathering are excellent.

 

Nice to see there are now conversions for these small cute models. I saw recently that there was a resin cockpit for the "AFV for kids" (and for me...) Mirage 2000. I planned to build it with the pilot, but a detailed resin cockpit could be nice as well.

[Thunnus]

Thanks for the comments guys!  I'll often stall out on my regular builds and having these little guys to work on is a good way to keep the mojo running.

 

When ScanmanDan mentioned the Retrowings conversion for the Tiger 109 kit, I immediately went to their website and put in an order.  I thought it was so cool!  Luckily, it was pretty affordable and the overseas shipping was not too bad wither.  The kit included a resin seat with harnesses molded in that came in handy.  From the spares box, I added a Revi gunsight and some sidewall inserts to dress up the empty fuselage sides.

 

 

 

 

As far as finishing is concerned, it starts with the pre-shade.  I didn't document this particular step on this build but I normally pre-shade my models using a couple of steps.  First I trace the panel lines with black.  And then I fill in the panels using a random mottle pattern, again using black.  I consider it a variation on the black-basing technique.  Here's what it looks like on the P-40 build.

 

 

In order to have the most control over dialing in the pre-shade effects, I use highly-thinned paint mixtures.  Typically, using Tamiya and Gunze acrylics, my thinner to paint ratios are about 4:1.  Building up the finish takes lots of passes with the airbrush this way but the preshading creates a subtle layer of depth and variation to the paint job.

 

 

Marseille's "14" was a hand-cut mask that I made from transluscent frisket paper.  The cowl gun barrels that were molded in place were cut out and replaced with barrels from a 1/48 109 kit.

 

The camo is sealed with a gloss coat.  After the decals are applied, I run a liquid pastel wash over the panel lines, which is wiped off when dry using pieces of moistened paper towel.  This gets sealed with a flat coat.  The Bf109F was then chipped using colored pencils.  I use a few different colors depending on the background color: silver and grey for dark colors and browns, greens and greys for the lighter colors.  I'll usually do some random streaking using pigments but for the Bf109F, I took a short cut and simply "streaked" the chipping that I had applied with a damp q-tip.

 

 

The final touch was the oil filtering.  I really don't have a good grasp on this technique so I'm using these eggplanes as a practice canvas.  It didn't come off well on this one I'm afraid, with the yellow areas being very apparent and distracting.  But on the positive side, it did cut down on the white frosting effect that occurs when I put too much Tamiya Flat Base into my matt coat mixture.

 

I have a few more of these things that I have on my shelf... Meng B-17 and a Tiger Corsair... that I'll pull out when I get too frazzled by my normal builds.  Looking forward to seeing others!