SPA Modeler

Time for the flat coat. After jumping around a few different flat clears, I've settled on Model Master Acrylic Flat Clear. It seems to avoid some of the issues I'd been having with other flats including not fully curing and ghosting/frosting.

I like how the flat coat takes all of the different elements (surface details, paint finish, masked markings, decals and wash effects) and gives a unified shell appearance to the exterior of the aircraft.







I thought this would be a good time to paint the exposed gun barrels. Since they stand clear of the surrounding gun trough, it would be easy enough to paint by brush but I thought I'd take advantage of the barrels' separation and spray them with the airbrush.


Some careful and creative masking...



The gun barrels were painted Alclad Stainless steel with the tips sprayed with black.



Here's the painted drop tank. I've cut off the molded representation of the strap and replaced it with a strip of thin brass sheet. The fuel lines were also cut off and replaced (with brass tubing) as the molded lines were too short and did not extend into the drop tank rack as they should have. One pet peeve are the EagleCal representation of the drop tank stencils. The forward most one should have a curved line of text to match the curvature of the drop tank. Inexplicably, the Revell decal is curved but in the wrong direction!

Very nice! I use MMA Flat Coat as well. Never had any problems with it.

Looking very sharp! I was wondering how you were going to paint the cowling guns.

Stikpusher wrote:Looking very sharp! I was wondering how you were going to paint the cowling guns.

I was wondering that myself.

Looks like he got it covered though......no pun intended. lol

Medicman71 wrote:Very nice! I use MMA Flat Coat as well. Never had any problems with it.

See how the drop tank is dead flat? I found it hard to get that flat finish without the clear starting to frost or turn chalky white. The MM acrylic has good resistance to that.

Another masterpiece almost done. Beautiful work sir!

Thanks guys!

I've done a little post-shading on the bottom...



Some post-shading on the top too with a round of salt fading that didn't quite register into the noticeable realm. I may have to give it another shot.





Salt fading on the control surfaces showed up a little better.

The paint job and weathering is so nice, looks like a real Bf 109.

What Norman said! That drop tank is stunning...well, the entire model is.

Some incremental additions in weathering... adding some more preshading and putting some chipping in using a sponge and also colored pencils.