How's your weekend been folks? Me? Well after painted the exhausts, I managed to break off the rudder on the Spitfire and spent 33 minutes looking around for it, but luckily I got it before the carpet monster did. I'm not quite sure how one loses a fully painted 1/48 Spitfire rudder, but for a while I did.
Anyways, let's talk updates. Most notably is likely the exhaust stain. I've tried a few different methods throughout my builds but generally I find spraying a heavily diluted mix of paint on a low pressure to be the best, I used XF-9 Hull Red mixed with XF-2 Black for the colour. I also sprayed this as carefully as possible on the exhausts, darkening them further.
I also applied a wash to the undercarriage, as well as that part on the tail I resprayed.
Finally I started oils. I really don't like using oils to be honest, I think a large part of this is a lack of practice as I tend to only use them quickly at the end of a model and then forget how to use them when it comes to doing it again 2 months later. I generally subscribe to a method of either putting oils on and brushing them in a direction with a brush, and then also thinning down the oils quite a lot so I can then proceed to blow with an empty airbrush to create some oil leaks. I'm not 100% happy with the Spitfire undersides, particularly on KL-N. But I think the stains on the fuselage are okay.
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Speaking of oils, I tried a different method of doing chipping this time. I tried applying a silver oil paint to the wing roots, and then wiping it off with a brush with thinner and some kitchen roll with thinner. This seems to create an effect that I'd describe as being more natural looking than I could achieve with a brush. To complete it, I did use a brush with Vallejo Model Air Aluminum (generally not a huge fan of Vallejo Air, but their Aluminium in the dropper bottle is a 10/10 paint for brush painting) and did a few small chips on the corner of some panels and access doors, I also painted over some of the silver oil wing root chipping which turned into a browner colour due to the use of brown oils on the wing root to try and darken it to make it look a little muddy.
2 additional images. Click to enlarge.
