‘Take off’, Focke Wulf FW 190 F-8, Airfix 1/72
This model was done prior to the Macchi MC202, between April and May of 2020. It was the first time that I started to experiment with some serious free hand camo, in general all the airbrushing done on this one was in freehand, due to the fact that I was using enamels thinned without cellulose on this one overspray and dripping when it came to the white camo stripes was a bit of a nightmare, in order to counter that, I used Q tips soaked in Artistic Turpentine and damped on a kitchen roll in order to clean the over-spray done when applying the white, this was done prior to applying the first gloss coat (the one usually done before applying decals).
One of the major problems I had in this build, which can be easily seen in the (build WIP pictures) was the amount of filler it had to take due to the gaps present in the build, this has been quite a problem for me with Airfix kits, low tolerance at times inside the cockpit area becomes a nightmare when spraying with enamels, this is all down to the thickness and consistency found in enamel paints, this would eventually translate into bigger gaps when assembling the fuselage to the cockpit, as you can see I did the mistake of painting the cockpit and painting it prior to attaching it to the fuselage, yet still that is the only way to do it in order to add detail even if ideally with these kits is you either assemble everything then spray or use thinner paint like lacquer acrylics etc, also try to avoid priming in such areas as that would add to the paint thickness.
Regarding the base for the Diorama, I took the idea from the final picture attached, it represents an aircraft from I/Schlachtgeschwader, 2 Immelmann, late in the war in fact according to the box art present this particular aircraft was in Hungary in 1945. The Focke-Wulf was a decent adversary to the Spitfire Mk V although against the Mk IX, it lagged a bit even though some would argue that the lagging was all down to the lack of experience of the pilots, piloting them (especially late in the war when German Human Resource was stretched), in my humble opinion the Focke-Wulf like the Macchi came late in the war.
The base itself was built by adding air drying clay in order to have a bit of elevation, after drying watered down PVA was added and fine plaster of Paris was sprinkled in order to create the snow effect, following that I sprayed watered down PVA on the snow area in order to seal it (PVA spraying was done via an empty household window cleaner bottle, applied from around half a meter away).
On the whole I am pretty happy with this build and quite honestly it is one of my favorites, especially due to the constant challenges it offered from the word go.
Kit and Figure from Airfix 1/72 and airbrushed with Humbrol enamels, bar from the figures which were hand painted and highlighted with oils.
Fantastic work
Thank you Sir, appreciate it
Although the kit gave you some fitting issues, it looks perfect, Chirstopher @chupajs
The free handed camouflage is awesome, like the base as well.
Thank you very much Sir, too kind of you
You did a great job, Christopher!
Excellent result on your first freehand camo and beautiful diorama!
Thank you Spiros, appreciate it
Nice job. Liked how you simulated a real pic.
Thank you Sir, I like taking ideas from actual pictures and try to build it like that, of course doing so is very limiting and at times require a lot of research, so that's a downside to it. Yet I love it.
Very nice! I like that camo scheme, and the overall diorama is very artistic. Well done.
Thanks Greg
I thought was of a larger scale, nicely done!
Nope Sir I only work in 1/72 scale and thank you for the comment
This is absolutely outstanding!
Where did you get the figures from please? I would like some in 1/48!
Congratulations again on a fab build
thanks,
figures are from Airfix