Hasegawa 1/32 Fw 190D-9 Brown 4

[jkim]

Fun fact: Spinner in German is a slang word that translates to wacko in english.
And with all respect, John: When it comes to modeling, you're a wacko!

Ha! Yes, I'm a little bit insane when it comes to modeling. But aren't we all???

You sure do have the spiral painting down. A great modeler once told me to treat every part of a model as it's own little model ( he was referring to ordinance at the time). I assume this is how you approach modeling. Sometimes - well most the time - I'm focused on getting the kit together for final paint, decals and weathering. Just looking at your treatment of landing gear and gear bays alone makes me want to slow down and take the advice I once received.

Thanks for the insightful comment, John! And yes, I try to break down the build into separate assemblies that I TRY to treat as models unto themselves. For me, it is a liberating approach since the timelines are shortened and focus is easier to maintain. It keeps the build fun and challenging, especially if I am far away from the finish line.

I remember taking an art class in college and one of the assignments was to pick a photo of a face from a magazine and draw it, except the photo would be placed upside down. It taught me to not to draw preconceived notions of eyes, lips and nose but to look at the picture and draw what I actually see. That's the mindset I try to adopt when modeling. Look at actual photos of the aircraft and let your eyes guide your modeling decisions instead of what you think you already know.

[BlackSheep214]

I.... I..... I..... screw it.....

[jkim]

I've been too busy to put any significant amount of time on the workbench but have been dinking and dunking on Brown 4 for the past couple of weeks.

The Revi 16B gun sight has been glued into place.



The frames on the windscreen have been painted previously and now the windscreen is glued into place. Since the hood over the instrument panel is resin, I used thin CA glue to attach the windscreen. Since it was dipped in Future, the windscreen should be protected from the CA fumes.




The cockpit opening is now masked with a combination of custom cut mask and yellow Tamiya tape.


The windscreen is now painted in the interior cockpit color (RLM 66, Mr Hobby Aqueous).


Painting is the next big step but I want to do it when I'm not so distracted by other things so I'm prepping for the painting but not quite ready to dive all the way in. The bottom has been wiped clean and the foam masks for the wheel wells pressed into place.


The natural metal portion of the wing bottom has been given a base of Tamiya Black. And I'm gonna stop here for a while to figure out how I want to paint the metal. Any preshading? Which paints? Etc.


So I've jumped over to some smaller components. The Eduard brass flaps have been painted. Both sides were lightly chipped using hairspray.

[jkim]

I re-did the landing gear covers after I realized that I had wrongly assumed that the bottom color was RLM 74 Dark Grey. My references say RLM 75 Violet Grey. The stencils were sprayed using the 1ManArmy masks, highlighting that these can be re-used multiple times.

[jkim]

After the landing gear cover re-paint, another look at the completed landing gear components.

[Stikpusher]

Looking great John! The detail and weathering on the landing gear is exceptional.

[Medicman71]

Incredible work as always. The landing gear look awesome!

[Stuart]

Just superb John - they look fabulous.

[jkim]

Thanks guys... appreciate the feedback as always!

I decided to give my self a kick in the pants and get the painting underway since the gloss black base for the natural metal has been sitting for a few days now. Prior to painting the black, I had mapped out the different colors on the bottom.


I've decided to try a different metal paint for this one. This Mr. Metal Color No.218 Aluminum. From the few Youtube clips I've seen, this paint seems to spray well and can be buffed after application if you want a shinier finish. It also seemed to have no adverse reaction to a clear coat on my paint mule.


I also wanted to try a matte pre-shade to see if I could create some texture in the metal finish. I used flat tan color to create a random mottle over the gloss black.



This is the metal color after spraying. You can see some of the texture that the flat mottle created when the surface is viewed at an angle. Otherwise, it is not very noticeable.


After drying, I buffed the metal surface lightly with a clean cotton t-shirt. This removed the slight graininess. Alclad Duraluminum and AK Extreme Metal White Aluminum were used to create contrast in the panels and ports.


The metal sections were masked off using Tamiya yellow tape.


The leading edge of the wing bottom was given a mottle treatment prior to spraying the RLM 75 Grey Violet (Mr Hobby Aqueous).



The Alclad colors, which had been sprayed directly on the Mr Metal, lifted with the tape so I ended up removing most of it.


Instead of fixing the panels, I decided to spray the black crosses first.




The panels and ports were re-sprayed (just Alclad Duraluminum this time) and the ailerons were painted RLM 76 Light Blue (Mr Hobby Aqueous). Here's what the wing bottom looks like after painting but before any weathering.



Dialing down the exposure, you can just make out some of the texture on the NMF.

[Floki]

That's a great variety of colors. I'm surprised to see the RLM75&76 both on the underside but still don't know much about late war camo