heres something ive been thinking about trying for a while,that is pre shading an aircraft with a deeper shade of the top colour. up to now ive been pre shading with straight black and have been wondering how an approach like this might turn out. the colours im using are humbrol 89 matt over white primer, and the top coat will be xtracolour rlm 76

bf 108 in primer

pre shaded with humbrol 89. i should get the underside sprayed this afternoon and will post back. im hoping it will be a subtle finish, not as harsh as black lines can be

Hi Phil

Nice idea - I agree that black can be a bit harsh. I often use dark grey for this reason. Another trick I've learned is that yellow has a nasty habit of looking green over black preshading (olive drab is a mix of black and yellow - it's true... try it... even in a computer paint package), so I use dark brown for those areas.

Looking forward to seeing the finished Bf 108.

All the best

Rowan

Nice idea, I think it might be a bit to subtle, but do let us know the results.
I've tried something similar, see my Henschel Hs 129. I still believe black works well, even under darker top colours, but the judgement has to be just right and the paint applied thinly. With my next batch of models I'm going to try something else. The undersides will recieve a black preshading, The uppersurfaces will be "pre-shaded" with the top colour, then that colour will have a couple of drops of white added and the panels filled in with that mix. That's the basic idea anyway, I have to try it out before deciding if it works or not. The big difference with this method is that the "pre-shading" is not covered. Well it can be depends how the altered colour is, I reckon it will be advantages to "fill in" the panel then gave a light overspray to the "pre-shaded" areas. I'm not really a convert to "scale" colour theory, which is what this method angles towards. The answer to that would be to darken the colour for the "pre-shading then use the original colour to fill in. I think that way will prove to dark and as you can't darken with, say black, and expect to get the colour back by adding white you would end up wasting paint.
Mal