Special Hobby G.50 Freccia

[mostrich]

Ok, it's the italian sesame street and I'm watching.
But don't use Spaghetti for the wiring, the stuff is too thick...

[Thomas_M]

What an engine! The resin really looks so good! Hope you will finish this one before a mainstream kit hits the street...

[lawman56]

Ok, it's the italian sesame street and I'm watching.
But don't use Spaghetti for the wiring, the stuff is too thick...

However, Linguine makes a great seatbelt.....

[Thomas_M]

[lawman56]

Well, the wings are on, and I've decided I don't want to fill in the spaces next to the wing root. Instead, I think I'll tell everyone that the Italians were so innovative, that those are the inlet ducts for the radiator. Never mind it had a radial Fiat engine......

[LyleW]

I like that thought, Joe....Yeah, that will work!

[lawman56]

Ok. So now that I've piqued everyone's interest about Gundam markers, I figured I ought to post it here as well. One thing I've learned over the years is that shadow is just a darker shade of the item it's on. That includes panel lines. I honestly am not sure where it became the "norm" to make all shadow and panel lines black. Black creates a demarcation, not a shadow. It's great on a dark color, but not so much on lighter ones.

That being said, my Freccia will have a light to medium greyish blue underside, so the Gundam marker I chose was a dark grey. For those unfamiliar with Gundam markers, they're spring loaded, chisel tipped paint markers sold in multiple colors. They're obviously used to paint Gundam figures, but are starting to gain popularity with the war gaming crowd for tiny figurine painting.

Here's my Freccia with panel lines drawn with the marker.



Notice, one side has small hatches colored in, while the other has them outlined. I'm going to see which looks better one the topcoat is applied.

Basically, all I did was carefully scribe the panel lines to create a slight trough. Nothing major, I just used the back of a #11 Xacto blade, then let the narrow tip fit into the trough and carefully, (for the most part), followed the lines. Unlike other paint markers, I found the paint to flow very smoothly with little to no pooling. I never once had to push the tip in to "re-load" it, and it dried within seconds.

Overall I'm pretty impressed. I was hoping to shoot some paint on it, but the last week has been very damp and rainy. Since my climate control consists of whatever is outside, I'm kind stuck until it stops.

[lawman56]

Tomorrow we paint!

[Thomas_M]

Looks good so far. Curious to see some pain ton this pre-shading.

[lawman56]

Well, the grand experiment and theory are so much . I primed the underside, used a dark grey Gundam marker to pre-shade my panel lines, then airbrushed my base color of Model Master Italian Blue Grey. In hindsight, a black marker would have probably worked better. What I didn't count on was the Gundam dark grey being almost identical to the Italian Blue Grey. Oh well. Live and learn.



In this picture, you can see how well they blend




In this close up, you can barely make out the pre-shading. Since I'm not going to strip all that off to try again, nor will I overpaint, for fear of losing details in the paint layers, I'll just sick with my normal weathering and enhancing by using washes. Meantime, I plan to experiment on a couple old 1/48 guys I have hanging around. Then I'll let the grandsons play with them