Today was painting day for my first Hudson. It has the standard brown/green camo scheme. I decided I wanted to mask to get the camo rather than trying to freehand the camo with my airbrush. I know this gives the model a hard edge camo, but in photos the actual airplane displays a tight demarcation line. This is just my opinion, but I think in this scale that planes with tight demarcation lines should be depicted with a hard line on the model. I just don't think a tight demarcation would be visible in 1/72.
Having already painted the undersurfaces, I masked the demarcation between the belly color and the upper colors with a freehand wavy mask. I used 2mm Tamiya tape to create the curved demarcation lines on the cowlings. When everything was masked, I painted the entire upper part of the plane with AK Real Colors RAF Dark Earth thinned about 30% with AK Thinner. I was surprised to see that my pre-shading actually showed through the brown. I didn't think it would. I have a rule that I always let the paint dry 24 hours before I mask over it. I took the time to create the masks for the green camo. I took a 4-view drawing of an early Hudson and enlarged it to 1/72 scale. I then robbed my wife's cooking equipment for some parchment paper. I don't know what she uses this for in cooking, but it works perfectly for creating tape masks. I started by cutting a piece of parchment paper a little bigger than I needed for the mask, then covering the paper with the easy to remove type of Frog Tape. I then cut out the mask I needed and taped it to the Frog Tape. Then I simply used some scissors to cut out the mask. Once this was done, I peeled the parchment paper off the tape and applied the mask to the plane. The thing I like about parchment paper is that the Frog Tape is easy to remove. I cut masks for each wing, the top of the horizontal stabilizer, each vertical stabilizer, the top of the plane, and the sides of the plane. These quick masks never quite meet to make a continuous mask, so I connect the masks using Tamiya tape.
I checked the dark earth and it felt completely dry. It has been unusually dry here, so I think the paint dried quickly. I decided to break my 24 hour rule by adding the masks just 4 or 5 hours after I had painted the first layer. I added all the masks and sprayed AK Real Colors Dark Green diluted about 30%. Once that was done, I added a few drops of white and sprayed some random spots on the green. After that, I sprayed some more random spots using dark green with some black added. I waited about an hour and removed the masks. Done for the day. This time I really will let the paint dry for 24 hours.
Cheers.
8 attached images. Click to enlarge.
