Recommendations for yellow on F-86

[ulvdemon]

Morning everyone, while choosing a scheme for my F-86 build, I noticed I have to paint the nose yellow. My first attempt wasn't the greatest so I am looking into an alternative. As it stands, I have already sprayed the area with Alclad II Aluminum and I am looking into the best brand of paint to paint for that section. The brands available to me are Model Masters, the regular Testors and Vallejo Acrylic. I am leaning more towards Vallejo since I should be able to clean it up with no issue and not damage the NMF finish underneath.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[thegoodsgt]

I'm curious, when you say the first attempt wasn't good, what went wrong? For example, was it not the right color, poor coverage, difficult to airbrush? That should help us offer alternatives.

Steven Brown

Scale Model Soup

[Bigasshammm]

Mask the area you want to paint. Then spray a white or grey primer depending how bright you want the yellow. Then the yellow. I'm betting your first attempt went awry because the yellow did not cover property over the nmf?

Just my guess. Insignia yellow from Model Master I've never had problems with.

[ulvdemon]

Sorry, it was yellow enamel sprayed over the NMF. It looks like a big blob of yellow.

This is probably the best picture of it I can find of the first attempt on an older build (not the current model):

[thegoodsgt]

For all intents and purposes you didn’t do anything inherently wrong. I don’t think the specific brand of paint is the issue. The color might (might) be a little bright, so maybe you’re looking to tweak the color itself a little?

I’ve found that even when you use the “correct” paint on a model, the result — the overall effect — can sometimes look odd. The model can look like…well, a model, not a representation in miniature of the actual aircraft. That we have to make mistakes to discover these problematic colors is one of the bummers in the hobby. The best you can do is learn from the experience and make notes of what works and what doesn’t.

When dealing with true, pure colors such as yellow and red I usually diminish their saturation by adding a small amount of another color. For example, with yellow I might add a few drops of tan and white so that the color isn’t quite so intense. The result is a color that’s much more in scale.

And as always, study photos of the real thing, like this one, and think about how you can adjust the colors to approximate what you see.

Steven Brown

Scale Model Soup

[ulvdemon]

Thanks for the help. I sprayed the white last night, plus the other colors I needed to add. The yellow will be tonight or tomorrow. Hopefully this time around it will come out not so... shiny. :)