Matt

Where to start. They have a good range of generally pretty accurate colours, so there is little custom mixing like Tamiya. Pollyscale brush paint better than perhaps any other acrylic. If you can get them to work, they airbrush beautifully, but they have a tendancy to be fussy and will often clog which can make them very frustrating to work with at times. They require very careful thinning, and often need an additional retarder. Everyone and his dog has their own special "here's how I get PS to spray with out clogging" recipe. Search in this forum and you'll find tons. I think the older one

Thanks. Its a post shade, I've never managed to get pre-shading to work right, although after the post shade I go back over with the base colour very lightly to blend it all in, so I guess you could call it a post-pre-shade. The flash makes it look a lot more contrasty than it is in reality. Cheers, Matt

Very nice. Makes me want to dig out another kit and start work. Matt

After my PollyScale disaster, I decided to try a soft mask instead. That way, if I had to spray PS, at least I could do it at a higher pressure and a larger opening. In the end, I made my own soft masks with a spare kit and tamiya tape. I transferred the tape to construction paper, cut out the masks, used then as s stencil on more paper, and made photocopies. Its not like I won't be doing another Spitfire any time soon. Fortunately, I was able to scrape up enough Xtracrylics Dark Green to get the job done. So, here's the paint work done. Just need a small touch up to the Sky band where a t

I guess I must have missed appeasing the modeling gods this week. What a nightmare. The plan was to freehand the Br Dark Green camo. I was going to do it Wednesday night, but I was too tired to face it, so I left it for Thursday night. Well refreshed, off I went. Mixed up my paint, started roughing out the edges. Boy, this looks kinda light. I guess it will darken as it dries. After edging both wings, its still looking very very pale. What on earth ?. Check the bottle, its Br Int Green, not Br Dark Green. Sod. Sod. Sod. Oh well, not a disaster yet, the dark will cover the light. So I mixed

I refinished a snowboard earlier this winter using rattle cans. After covering everything in the garage in neon green dust I was banished outside for the remainder of the process. Whilst I tried to pick warmer days (at least sunny and dry) the temperature was never much above freezing. What I did was keep the work and the cans indoors. When I was ready to go I put the workbench outside and got it all ready. I shooks the can thoroughly indoors, then put them in a sink of hot water for 10 mins. Shook them again, and put them in a bucket of hot water. Rushed the work out to the bench. Rush the bu

Good grief, I feel like such a slacker. All these years I've been using Tamiya IJN Cockpit Green as it comes and not worrying. Clearly I'm letting the side down. Sorry chaps, will try harder in future. Cheers, Matt

Looking good. Maybe I should ship my Spitfires to you for painting I think the accuracy police would have had kittens if they found out what was applied in real life, so I wouldn't worry too much. Cheers, Matt

Thanks for the comments, all very much appreciated. After a little soul searching, I decided to leave the underside as-is for now. I'm going to do the upper colours, then strip off all the masking and see how it all looks in relation in the daylight (the flash does tend to make things look a little more stark than in reality). I figure I can always tone it down some more later, and that will be easier than having gone too far with it. So, here's the upper Ocean Grey done.Again, I think it looks worse in the picture than in reality. Next up, freehanding the Dark Green. Cheers, Matt

Here's how I do it. It might sounds like a lot of work, but it really isn't. First off, I don't preshade in the classic sense of laying down a very dark shading first, then apply the base colour over the top in light coats. I start with the base colour until I get a nice overall covering. I take the base colour and mix a little dark grey or black in to make a slightly darker shade, and work back over the areas that I want to be darker. Then I take the base colour, mix a little white or pale grey in, and work over areas I want to be faded or lighter. I keep doing this working in lighter and da

More progress, long on work, short on pictures I'm afraid. Final construction brought back the bug-bears. The Part PE head armour sat too high and interfered with the rear cockpit glazing, preventing it from sitting down properly. Rather than try and remove the head armour, I elected to modify the glazing to fit , and promptly snapped it in two. Sod. I thought I should have plenty of spares, but it turns out all I had were some Airwaves Vac castoffs that I hadn't used. Now, I hate working with Vac canopies, but any port in a storm. The vac item had the opposite issue, it was too tall. For

Agreed, I still have plenty of things left to finish, why is it the last 10% ends up taking 70% of the time ! Cheers, Matt

Thanks for the kind words guys, much appreciated. After a bear of a week at work, I decided to take a 'mental health' day. Fortunately, no major disasters ensued today, so major construction is done, and only the barest hint of Mr Surfacer 1000 on a couple of joints. The only 'aw crap' moment came about 30 seconds after attaching the upper wings to the fuselage (I do them first to get a clean joint), when I realised Tamiya mold on the later skin stiffeners and I hadn't remembered in time to remove them earlier. No biggie, a couple of slices with a razor blade and a few swipes with a sanding

Had a go at the tracks and running gear with some MiG pigments that I've been looking to use for a while. To be honest, I think I need more practice, but I can see the value. The tracks are now perhaps a little too rusty looking, but I think I can cut that back with additional brushing off. I also shot a very light mist of Tamiya Buff to tone down the camo so it was not as stark. I'm not sure if that worked as well as I thought it would. As the weather was co-operative, I went outside to get some better light and take some better pictures. Cheers, Matt

Good grief, so many great builds, and so quick. Some of you are completing a kit quicker than I can do a pair of tracks. I feel like such a sloth.... Anyway, quick update, I finally wrestled the tracks on. Paint is a mix of Tamiya Metallic Brown and Gun Metal. They still need some rusty weathering, but I'm going to try some weathering powders, so I left that until later. Cheers, Matt

Somedays you just have to keep reminding yourself, "this is fun, this is fun". I don't think I've had more grief doing a Tamiya Spitfire cockpit than this one. This is the third attempt at painting the seat. I'm still not totally happy with it, but darned if I'm doing over again. The seat armour is the original kit part, thinned down. The Eduard PE part was too thin and sat at a really weird angle. The seat mounting struts have been rebuilt at least twice. I've knocked the PE seat supports off twice. Frikkin' nightmare. Pollyscale Br Int Green hazed over a flat black base, no wash, no dr

Very nice. I nearly went with Bobby Gibbes 'Grey Nurse' before I decided on a Vb, so I'm really looking forward to how this one comes out. Cheers, Matt.

Hi, my names Matt, and I'm a Spit-a-holic. My last 5 aircraft were Spitfires. This is supposed to be an easy return to aircraft, after a motorcycle , 2 tanks and a snowboard. I was looking at my shelves and thought, "A Vb. I don't have a Vb. I'll do a Tamiya Vb, OOB. That will be a nice warm up kit." So whilst I was mulling that over in the stash, I remembered I had a set of the Victory Production "Aces of the Empire" decals. I could pick a Vb from them. So hunting for those, I found a box with some long forgotten Ultracast bits, wheels, props, Vb exhausts, seats, door, control surfaces. W

Another quick update on my Panther. After the wash, a coat of PS flat to seal it in, and give some bite for the 'wear and tear'. I know there is a move towards almost perfect chipping and scratching effects, perhaps almost overdone in some cases, but I can't for the life of me do that. I suck at chipping. So, here's my poor mans equivalent, a rough drybrush with a very dark steel (Citadel acrylic mix) followed up with a lighter 'flick' with a brighter shade. Drivers side hatch, Drive Sprockets Engine Hatch Full shot I also finished the wood handles on the tools. Its a Raw Umber/

Interesting, Spitfire the Canadians has a profile showing PT396 as a large tailed, late carbed MkIX. The EJC codes in red/white outline following the fuse roundel (so, oEJC rather than EJoC), and a Tangemere crest on fin above the fin flash. So who to trust ? Cheers, Matt

Some great builds appearing here, kudos to all. After a fast start, things for me have slowed down. I touched up some over spray in a few places, started picking out the tools, shot a light coat of Future to help protect the paint work from the wash, then applied a light oil wash. I've decided not to do with any decals or markings. I'm not making any specific vehicle, and none of markings supplied by Dragon really grabbed me, so to heck with it, no markings. As this will be a relativly clean vehicle, I can always suggest this is before delivery to its unit... yeah, thats the ticket :wacko:

A stiff bristled paint brush to get the colour cup scrubbed clean, some Oral-B interdental brushes for cleaning out the paint path, Qtips for swabbing the cap and the body, and occaisionally a needle if the nozzle gets blocked. Cheers, Matt

I'm not sure its a trick as such, but I can tell you how I did it. It helped that the combination of the Panther wheel and Dragons moulding makes for a very nice lip between the tyre and the wheel rim. I used Citadel Chaos black acrylic, as it brushes really well, especially thinned slightly, and touch dries pretty quick. I have a small artists pallette, I put paint in one spot, water in another, and then kept a lightly thinned mix in a third. I found an old paintbrush that would mount the wheels on one end or another. I laid out all the wheels end to end, and started with the first one, I m

Well, so much for my grand idea of using an all-black base as a sort of 'uber-preshade'. It worked really well for the single colour parts (lower hull, roadwheels) but all fell apart when it came do the camo. I just don't have the airbrush skills to lay the camo down in one pass with very light control. I ended up having to go over each colour 2 or 3 times until I had it all straight, by which time any pretense of a preshade was long gone. Oh well, it will all come out in the 'wash' <_< So here's the stripy Panther. Cheers, Matt

Acrylics can certainly be a pain sometimes like this. The 'translucent spatter' sounds like water build up in the air supply. You might want to look at some kind of inline filter. I used to get this a lot on my old diagphram compressor, and it seemed worse when trying to do fine line spraying than larger areas. I only really cured the problem when I switched to a compressor with an air-tank. If your regular mix is still coming out splattery, then that suggests you are either too thin or still have too much pressure. You might want to try playing around with both until you find a happier medi