1/32 AVG Warhawk

[Alex]

8 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Lovely paint work, Alex!

 

Kev

Thanks!  Hope to make it even better with some oil paint filters later on...

[Phartycr0c]

nice work on this beastie

 

[Alex]

Some wrap up painting tonight.  For the ID stripe around the fuselage I used Gunze primary red, toned down with some white and some extra-dark ocean gray.  The shiny semi-gloss look is obnoxious; I just try to squint and ignore it until that final matte coat makes it all come together.

 

Stripe from farther away

 

[Alex]

Repainted the wheel wells.

 

 

And did the photoetch flaps and wheel well doors

 

[Alex]

I did some judicious sanding where I had a couple of raised edges on the green sections - clearly got too much paint up against the edge of the masks.  2500 grit sanding sponge fixed it, as well as a couple tiny areas of overspray.  Tomorrow I will hit the whole thing very lightly with a 4000-grit sponge, wipe down carefully, and then Future it.  Decals this weekend once the Future is good and hardened.

 

One thing I always struggle with is thinking I should be painting insignia rather than using decals.  I've learned some tricks to make the decals look pretty good, but they always ultimately look like decals, not like paint.  I regularly make masks for simple circular insignia (i.e. RAF or Japanese hinomaru).  But something like the Chinese Nationalist sunburst is way too fiddly to make by hand and expect it to look good (at least if I made it).  I wish there was a good source of professional, machine-made masks for more obscure things like this.  I know I can get US insignia masks from Montex, and I think I will be doing that henceforth.

 

I wonder if anyone makes masks for the shark mouth?  I saw an article once where someone masked one by hand (I think even at 1/48), but again, I try that and it will NOT look as good as a decal does...

[Alex]

Decals on.  I'll give 'em a few hours to fully dry, then obsessively poke each rivet with a pin before Micro-Sol-ing them to get them good and snugged down.

[LSP_Kevin]

This is really looking great, Alex!

 

Kev

[Alex]

52 minutes ago, LSP_Kevin said:

This is really looking great, Alex!

 

Kev

Thanks!

I'm now at that nervous phase where I have to try to do just the right amount of weathering without messing up the work done to date. My last step is usually to add some light gray Vallejo Model Air to my matte varnish coat.  It usually does a good job of toning down those obnoxiously bright decals.

[Alex]

On to weathering/detail painting!  I'm going for some hopefully pretty subtle accentuation of the panel lines and rivet detail.  Below is a shot of the horizontal stabilizers from underneath.  The one on the right (of the photo; port side of airplane) has been done, the left is untouched.

 

 

I'm using this new (to my workbench) Tamiya enamel panel line liquid.  It's really nice!  I have tried a similar product from MIG (lousy IMO) and done the DIY mix of artists oils and odorless spirit, but this stuff is superior to both by far.  I'm using Black for the underside of the plane; I have some Dark Brown on order for the topsides.

 

[Alex]

This was the whole underside of the plane with the panel line liquid applied.  I only did a few rivets on one of the decals as an experiment, just to be sure there was not some untoward effect.  I have been giving it 2-3 hours to dry between application and removal.

 

And after wiping all that mess off:

 

I have found that trying to use a Q-tip (cotton bud ex-US) to remove the excess tends to be too efficient at scouring it out of the recessed detail.  I'm using Kim-Wipes (lint-free lab wipes that you can buy from Amazon) folded into a little pad, ever so lightly moistened with odorless spirit, and dragged gently across the surface.  I'm finding it helpful to dab an area lightly to soften the dried enamel, wait a few seconds, then come back and wipe.  Seems to be the best way to clean the surface while leaving stuff in the details.  Nothing bad happened to the decals where I tested, so I went ahead and applied wash over them, and touched up a few other spots where I had over-removed the first round.

 

Edited April 19, 2020 by Alex
misspelled

[Alex]

I actually went and quickly deepened some of the chin rivets with a micro-drill because they weren't taking the wash well.  I'm pretty happy with how this looks now:

 

And yes, that missing machine gun is going to be replaced!  If I could go back I would have ignored the instructions and not installed them when I closed up the wings.

 

I'm still unhappy with the uneven nature of the detail over these decals.  I need to go in and carefully poke/scribe it in a bit more positively and then try the wash over.  This kind of fooling around is what makes me wish I had the skills to paint all insignia and stop messing with decals, at least for things this large.

 

[Alex]

I've now finished touching up the underside, and gotten most of the way there on the upper surfaces, at least as far as panel line/rivet wash in concerned.  I still need to do one more touch-up and cleaning pass on the upper surface.  I ended up deciding to use black PLW on the top after all, as Tamiya's brown is too light a brown to standout against these colors.  It might only really be useful for something like a desert camo scheme.

 

 

I still need to clean up the wheelwells a little bit, too.

 

 

This will look much better once it is flat-coated.  As soon as the PLW is really done, I'll shoot a coat of flat with a bit of sand yellow in it over the top, and flat with light gray on the bottom.  That will hopefully tone down the decals and blend the colors a bit.

 

 

Gotta tone down those decals still.  The flat coat will the the base for some work with oil paints and then pastels to finish the surface effects.

[Alex]

Also, for anyone who is thinking about building this kit, it's notable that the surface detail molding is uneven - the rivet detail on the horizontal stabilizers is way too pronounced, while it fades out to almost nothing in places on the fuselage.  You could go over the fuselage parts ahead of time and deepen them selectively.  It would be harder to fill and re-do the tailplane surfaces; maybe CA glue would be the best filler for this purpose.

[bdthoresen]

I love the AVG Tomahawks. Great work!

 

THOR    

[LSP_Kevin]

That looks fantastic, Alex!

 

Kev