The Spitfire's Final Paint Scheme

..........................................................................................................................................................pation. I finally finished up the last of the minuscule parts and decided to place those yet again in front of the final camouflage pictures. Well babies, don't you panic. They are a bit further down. If you happen to still be on dial-up, I'm so sorry for you because this will take forever to load. Gird your loins, here we go.

Here we have the rear view mirror and the gas cap. I left these off because I didn't know quite what to do with them. Then it came decision time. I decided to paint the gas cap silver because I wanted to add a bit of contrast to the camo pattern. I painted the gas cap when it was still attached to the sprue. I then cut it off and had to trim a little bit off and touch it up. I was very concerned with losing it, so I stuck it to some blue tack until I was ready to attach it.

Next are the resin exhaust pipes from Ultracast. I primed these when I primed the body, but I wasn't sure what to do about them.

I headed off to the closest hobby shop and just started asking questions. Sure enough, everyone has an opinion and is usually very willing to dole it out. The sales rep was very familiar with Spitfires and knew my kit was a Tamiya when I told him it was a Mk I in 1/48. Typically exhaust pipes of Spitfires from that era collected rust. I picked up, rust paint and Jet Exhaust to mix in. I ended up adding a little Leather (brown) to darken it a bit. It turned out a little more red then I would have liked, but I'm not going to strip it at this point.

After painting I dry brushed silver on the opening edge of the exhaust. After the silver, I mixed some flat black and flat white and dry brushed the back two exhausts. The exhaust on the left is untreated, the exhaust on the right has been dry brushed. It's easier to see in real life.

Both are done, and I'm fairly pleased with the results........until I attached them.

See, I told you I would get to the camo this time around! I began the process by masking off the bottom to prevent over spray. I started with the dark earth color and painted it in the places where it should be while avoiding the areas where the dark green would go down. The theory is to preserve some of that awful pre-shading to add some variation to the paint job. On the other hand, I didn't want too much of it showing through because, well, just look at it.

Profile shot. I added a bit of white to the bottle and did some post-shading inside the panel lines to lighten them up. The effect is supposed to make it appear as though the paint job was faded a bit by the sun. Just before I finished up with this coat, the plane flipped out of my hand and landed on the antenna mast.....again. A little more glue and a touch up to the tip of the mast. Infernal delicate parts.

The shot that will be the segue into the next one.

Wasn't that an awesome segue? I used some blue tack here, the same stuff that you would use for hanging propaganda posters or other such paraphernalia. It serves two functions. The first is to provide a soft edge in between the two colors. Number two-ly, it's a lot easier to make it all squiggly-wiggly than cutting masking tape.

WOOO! More blue tack. I probably could have left this picture off, but it's not like you're paying by the megabyte. Unless you're using a 4G Hotspot, then well....

Boom, pictorial segue. I knew I left that last one in there for a reason.

I just covered up the areas that need to remain dark earth with some cut paper towel.

Dark green is down and the post-shading is done. It looks lighter in person.

As you can see, most of that pre-shading mess is covered, which on the other hand removes its whole purpose. It's a trade off sometimes.

The big reveal!

I present to you, the front.

Well I've got to add all the angles for the grand inspection.

The gloss lacquer coats started yesterday. I was having trouble with my airbrush handling the Future acrylic floor polish so I just gave up on it. I saw a can of gloss lacquer, so I just used that. The gas cap and exhaust pipes are attached for the gloss coating goodness.

The glossy profile.

On the underside here, I just took some shaved dark gray charcoal and brushed it on until it built up a nice gun powder residue on the gun ports and cartridge ejection ports. I also did this on the top of the wing, but since it is so much darker it's a bit hard to tell.

That's it for now. Time has expired for this model at the moment. I'll add a few more gloss coats and when I get to the decals I'll put out another post. Here is the corresponding YouTube video: http://youtu.be/51Jhep4rQAA

I forgot to mention in the video one more paint color I used, dull red for the seat that I had in a spray can. Grand total of 14 paints. For a half ounce of paint, it's $4.95. 128 fl ounces in a gallon, x2 would be 256 bottles of paint to equal one gallon. 256 bottles of paint at $4.95 = $1254.40/gallon. Aren't you glad gasoline doesn't cost that much?

In the meantime, you may see some posts about a Gundam model I've been working on with the boys. The oldest one has really taken to it and it's been a fun project to get them introduced to model building.