:-) I have used Areomaster decals, they went on pretty well. Having put them on I realised that the blue part of the wing markings, that are on the fabric areas, would need to be lightened in a similar fashion to the fabric areas themselves. I have used Insignia Blue lightened with Intermediate blue. The uppersurface roundel is lightened more than the lower surface one. The uppersurfaces will be faded overall using Medium Sea Grey.
Masking the roundels was quite difficult, but worked out in the end


It's not easy to see the shade difference in the pics. I wanted it to be subtle.






And 1 pic of the rest of the bird


Having used Xtracolor paints, on the roundels, I will have to wait about a week to make sure it's dry before the next coat of clear so I can add the fading and then the wash :-)
Mal

Looking excellent, especially the faded areas on the decals. I would have been terified the masking tape would pull the decal away when removed. I think you guys are more than modellers, more like artists.

Brilliant work. I think it will be a fantastic effect when all is said and done.




Brandydoguk read my mind. How did you protect the decals, Mal? And how did you cut the mask to precisely fit the shape of the star? I presume you didn't use an X-acto on top of the decals...

Looking Awsome!!! Can't wait to see the finished results!

:-) Martin


:-) Part-timer


Having decided to lighten the blue my first concerne was exactly that, how to mask the decal without pulling it off. An obvious solution would seem to be to apply a coat of clear, which was done, but only partly to protect the decals from masking. If the decals aren't secure nothing will stop masking tape lifting them, even under a coat of varnish. Unless the masking tape is very low tack. My first attempt was to use decals from a Hobby craft Corsair. I cut the relevant parts out, put the first in water and it disintigrated. I coated the remainder with Klear but it still broke up. I then decided that they were the wrong shade anyway, so masking and painting was the only answer. I did the upper surface one first, the wings are going to be folded and would hide any misshaps. I used Scotch removable tape, it didn't lift the decal but it allowed paint under it. I half expected this so had a contingency plan. I basically used a paint brush and white spirit to clean the paint off. You cant tell there ever was a problem. I didn't want to go through that again so I decided to use Tamiya tape, actually recycling the tape that masked the fabric areas. The roundel shape was cut with a Olfa circle cutter, I overlapped 2 pieces of tape. To mask to the points of the stars I simply cut tape at an acute angle, and used 3 pieces. I hand painted the lighter areas. The Tamiya tape masked areas caused no problems at all :-)
Mal

:-) I have now sprayed the fading coat. As mentioned previously I use a very diluted medium sea grey. The main colour coats are already protected with Klear, so if I balls this up I could remove it and start again. Because the main colour is relatively light anyway I had to go carefully, I spent some time convincing myself that this would work on such a light colour. I decided that what I needed to do was to thin the paint even more than I would normally, for this application. The idea of this "fading" coat is to give the impression of paint bleached by the sun, if it's over done then you might aswell just paint the uppersurface Medium Sea Grey. The trick is to let the underlying colour to just show through and to apply this affect to the top of the wings and the very upper part of the fuselage. It is applied over everything, decals included, but in a restrained manner. I also make a point of not covering evenly
The lighting available (the sun) dosen't show the affect to perfection but you get some idea


You can just about see how the 2 shades of the roundel show through but are both faded


This demonstrates it a little clearer


By hitting it with the fill in flash it's quite clear where the Medium Sea Grey has been applied. The actual visual affect is somewhere between this and the previous picture.

Mal

Looking good, Mal. It's going to be interesting to see how bad I botch all these new techniques when I build that Corsair sitting over here mocking me. I don't think I would have thought to fade the decals on the cloth panels, but now that I know I have to give it a shot.

The aircraft master, you do the pre-shading so well.
Looking great,

Andrew

Looking good. Did you overspray any of the fading on the white areas of the stars and bars, I can't quite tell from the pictures? My first instinct would be to mask the white but thinking about it now I'm not so sure, as the sun bleaching may have affected the white markings as well as fading the other painted areas.

again another sweet set of photos, very nice work as usual

Bender