SPA Modeler

Stikpusher wrote: well I sure can't fault you there. John, you definitely know your stuff.

Only when I stumble upon the correct info in time to incorporate it into the build!

speedgraflex wrote:hey, wait did I guess correctly? I had thirty minutes for lunch and all I did was study your photos with close attention... I did! Cool. Wow. I want a prize, lol. I jest, of course. I just felt something was off with the covers, not the struts, aesthetically, at first than I could not figure out how the gear would fold up into the plane, so, cool. I was wondering if you figured out why this may have happened because it is not like you to do something like this, not from perfection, but you do pay close attention to detail, so I was wondering why. Maybe, it's not very important, but I was thinking about why... I was thinking it may be because wheel covers on the Tank and Dora for example, have the same orientation... it was my post lunch speculation today at any rate. Congratulations on this build! Also, that is a really cool illustration of the wings, wow, that is a beautiful drawing and easy to understand which is a sign of good artwork, in my humble opinion.... Cheers, gents.

Yes, you win Bruce! Let me think about a prize!

It was just a space-out on my part. No excuse for it since I had plenty of time to familiarize myself with the landing gear orientation when I stuck them in the closed position to stripe the white ID stripes. Maybe your explanation about the Dora doors jutting forward played a part, who knows?

mostrich wrote:John, aside from your marvelous builds I'm admiring your photography. How many light sources do you use and how much comes post processing into play?

Regards,
Torben

My build pictures are from a Canon S95, which is a point-n-shoot but has the ability to shoot RAW, which I take advantage of. For my finished pictures, I use a Canon 7D with a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 No artificial lights... just ambient (not direct) daylight in my little courtyard. Since I shoot in RAW, every photo has to be processed and I use Lightroom for that.

Here is one that I haven't posted yet. I built this Eduard 1/48 Bf109E-4 in Battle of Britain markings in 2015. It turned out ok with the exception of the aerial wire. It is too thick and doesn't sit straight. It looks like an unpainted piece of stretched sprue. And the springs are too big for the scale.



So I decided to replace the aerial two years after I completed it. Instead of springs, I added some smaller blobs of white glue. I handpainted the aerial dark brown. Ahhh... much better.


I ran out of daylight so I'll try and remember to take some better pictures of the improved Emil soon.

Wow! Just incredible.

Very nice indeed! Battle of Britain 109s are fun with their variety of schemes and markings...

Thanks guys! It was just something I had to do. The build, if I remember correctly, was fairly by-the-numbers. Being a Profipack edition, it had the prerequisite photoetch details included in the box. No resin came with the kit. Built pretty much out of the box, with the exception of a few wires in the cockpit and on the landing gear legs.

Very nice! The weathering looks spot on and easy on the eyes. Well done!

A real 109 couldn´t have looked more convincing! Are you an artist by profession? You play with colours and shades is just beautiful! A true master!

Thank you for the comments!

Thomas_M wrote:A real 109 couldn´t have looked more convincing! Are you an artist by profession? You play with colours and shades is just beautiful! A true master!

Thank you Thomas. Not an artist but an engineer by trade. I like to think that I have artistic "tendencies" though. I dabbled in custom painted fishing lures before jumping back into modeling and I think that helped in terms of mixing colors.

You don't happen to be in the drafting side of engineering? I know it's all CAD now, as opposed to pencil and paper...