Hey David @dirtylittlefokker, If Herr Stigler goes on another walk about, I found you a replacement pilot.

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

I spent a little time doing some weathering, mainly a very thin panel line mixture along the rivet lines to give the illusion of stringers and longerons/ribs. I know there is a certain debate about just how ‘realistic’ this effect looks, but I think when done subtly it’s a neat little illusion that takes a model that little further away from ‘toy’.

Masked off the canopy and painted it. Did a little shading using artists oils and some pigment, but need to do some more. Plus, there’s some remedial work needed on the underside where time away from the bench showed in some impatient work.

Three days now without self injury, mishap, or acts of sheer stupidity. Hey, four would be a lifelong personal best...

James, you are nuttier than a fruit bat. I have to find one of these guys and stick him in a dio with one of those ‘egg planes’ - would be a hoot. Made my day, sir,

Like Peter, I also have been looking forward to seeing how your 109 was going to be finished. Those panel lines look simply stunning ! If you don't mind, what exactly did you use for the mixture applied along the rivet lines ? It definitely gave the illusion of stringers, longerons and ribs...

The blurred prop turned out fantastic as well... 🙂

David the 109 is really looking great, and it's nice to hear that Herr Stigler was hiding all this time in the cockpit. You can attribute his lost to the onset of what I term half-heimers. A symptom of which is walking into a room and then looking around and trying to remember the reason for said action. As for Texas sayings I've always like the one that went "If it's true it ain't bragging." Now have a great day.

Thanks, @tom-bebout and @yellow10 - really great to have a couple of iModeler heavyweights (no insult whatsoever intended) on board.

Today was the fourth day in a row where, a) I got some time on the bench, and b) didn’t have a disaster. Oh, and c) didn’t do any psychology work (well, apart from hanging out with you guys). On a roll, I tell ya.

Cranked up the work on the B-17...

Used the ‘black basing’ technique which I’m becoming more in favour of than preshading. I think as there is such a lot of olive drab on this plane that I’ll need to break it up and get lots of tonal variations in there. Also, I’m trying to replicate something of the ‘Higher Call’ painting - see below - where there’s a stylistic element to the project.

Hoping to go for a fifth day on the bench tomorrow and get more shading on the Fortress done.

Oh, and the coffee machine is now INSTALLED. Oh, boy, these are the days.

Peter, I’ve done a fair amount of oil painting (um, mainly because of the live models in class, but that’s another story), and the point you make is exactly on point. The idea with black basing (you are also correct about avoiding black) is to build texture and interest, not to just highlight panel lines (which you lose even if you are a tiny bit heavy on the airbrush).

My favourite source for this technique is Doogs’ Models - link below...

Technique: Black Basing

Onto the ‘hornet’s nest’ issue of B-17 colours in ETO.

After considerable research (google and coffee) it is clear that the European B-17s were painted standard olive drab over the natural metal (with no primer, perhaps one contributing factor to the degree of variance in Fortress’s appearance). Olive drab being an unstable mixture (including red in the mix) reacted in unpredictable ways to sun, rain, heat, cold, high altitude, and fuel spillages. The distinctive brown colour that some B-17s are seen in apparently comes from the deterioration of the olive drab, causing the red pigment to interact more with the green (red + green = brown). Makes for an interesting modeling challenge.

Some interesting photos showing the wide spread of shades and hues of the ETO B-17...

I don’t think my initial efforts are hugely wide of the ballpark, and as you can see above, it’d be difficult to argue against almost any combination of green and brown.