Airfix 1/24 Hawker Typhoon using Miracle Paint Masks.

[Miracle Paint Masks]

I have neglected to post this so here goes. The plan is to have this at my trade stand at Telford where I will be doing demonstrations of how paint masks work. It will be wheels up and prop spinning and, with a bit of luck, a pair of rockets leaving the rails.

 

I started by priming the whole of the airframe with Mr Paint fine white primer.

 

 

I masked the canopy, using the masks that will come in the set. The reason that it wasn't in position when I applied the primer is because the white will show on the inside if I did.

 

 

 

I pre-shaded over the panel lines and around detail using gloss black. The canopy was painted matt black

 

 

 

The under side was painted with medium sea grey. I used the colour to pre-shade over the rivet detail, then thinned the paint a little more and over sprayed over the whole of the under side to blend in the pre-shading.

 

 

 

 

The under side colour was masked off.

 

 

And in the mean time I painted the rockets, the bodies are Humbrol dark green 33 and the war heads are WEM colourcoats deep bronze green.

 

 

I used my camouflage masks to delineate the ocean grey areas, but there was a slight problem, can you spot it!

 

 

Yep, the main mask on the port wing is too small! I checked and it is 1/32 scale!!?

 

 

Not an issue, I just cut the piece to 1/24 scale and cracked on. Actually it was a big deal as I had signed off the samples for the printing and I had spent 2 days getting the 13 elements of the camo into 2 sheets of material. This layout was reflected in the diagrams in the instructions! I immediately phoned the printers and luckily managed to stop the print run before it had started! Phew. I had to re-jig the sheets, which now meant that I had to revert back to 3 sheets. There is a bit of an up side to this; the 2 sheets were the largest size that would fit into my zip lock bags, and had to be trimmed very closely. This was a real pain and I could only get 2 across the width of my plotter with a fair amount of wastage. With the new, 3 sheet set up, I made sure that I could get 4 across the width with no wastage, for all 3 sheets. So all in all I may just be saving material.

 

 

 

So with the masks in place I sprayed along the edges with WEM ocean grey, then the masks were removed, living the areas to be painted marked out.

 

 

 

 

OK, I'll leave it there for the time being and post the pics of the upper surface camo going on later.

 

 

 

 

[Layton]

Yep! looking very good so far! 

[artro219]

Very nice

[Miracle Paint Masks]

II used the ocean grey camo colour to pre-shade over the rivet detail.

 

 

I then over sprayed the areas with the paint diluted a bit more, to blend everything in.

 

 

When it looked like more paint was needed I stopped and came back to it the following day. This is important as you only get to see what actually is required when you come back to it and the paint has dried. I thinned paint even more and over sprayed until I thought that more was still required and came back to it the following day. It required just a little more thinned paint in places.

 

 

The following day I used my camouflage paint masks to mask out the ocean grey.

 

 

 

 

The dark green followed the same process as the ocean grey.

 

 

 

 

[Miracle Paint Masks]

Camo masks removed.

 

 

 

 

[Miracle Paint Masks]

Markings painted on:

 

 

 

 

 

Painting the invasion stripes using my "D-Day Invasion stripe helpers". The instructions for these show outlining and painting the white areas first, then masking out the white to paint the black; which is how I figure most would want to approach this. I however have a different approach in that I masked off the 3 white areas separately, painted the white, then masked these off and painted the black. The aircraft that I am modelling, ZY-B MN317 of 247 "China British" Sqn, had the areas for the "B" on the starboard side and the "ZY" on the port side left clear of the stripes, so I masked these areas off, as well as the fuselage roundel. For that I cut a dis a scale 1" larger then the roundel, which gives a 0.5" border.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used Maskol liquid mask applied with a piece of scouring pad to achieve some random chipping of the stripes.

[Spitfire]

Looking good Mal.

 

Cheers

 

Den

[kahunaminor]

Mal,

Great tutorial and results. Thanks for sharing.

 

Regards,