ORIGINAL: IrishDancerSUE
The paint is very well done CafeenMan and everything else looks great as well! Very impressed.
Love the pilot's colours especially. So realisitic on the gun as well.
Sue - Thank you for the compliments. The pilot is my first serious attempt at figure painting and I'm very pleased with how it came out. Note where a bullet winged the pilot's left cheek.
I learned a lot. One thing in particular is that it pays to wet a rag with thinner and wipe the paint off and try again until you're satisfied. The face is a base coat of "flesh" acrylic. Then it was brushed with various oil paints followed by lots of dry-brushing. The eyes were more oil paint and then a final top coat of satin clear to fuel proof and remove the gloss.
ORIGINAL: abufletcher
So how are you doing that "worn metal" look on the gun? Looks great! I imagine you've already glued the gun down so I'll just shut up at this point.
That is actually very easy and there are several techniques that work. First, never use black paint for anything that's supposed to be black. Use 80%ish gray instead (4 parts black, 1 part white). That always looks better. After the base coat dried I used a 100% black wash to darken shadows. I followed that with random burnt sienna washes and a dirt (tan) wash. I dry brushed with light grays.
Another way is to rub the edges with a regular pencil. The cooling sleeve was sprayed with a shade of Testor's metalizer. I don't remember which, but it didn't matter since I had no idea what the right color was. I had to dry-brush it several times using white oil before the highlights were visible. Again, I sealed it all with klass kote satin clear epoxy.
I managed to cut another 1/4" off the bottom of the gun. The gun is overall 3/8" lower than in the first photos I posted here. This has complicated things since there is a nylon bolt glued inside the gun to hold it down and remove it for repairs if necessary. Unfortunately, cutting away the plastic revealed CA and micro balloons that were originally used to glue the bolt in place. The glue will interfere with the nut used to hold the gun down. I'm not taking acetone anywhere near this gun. It would take hours to remove the glue and I'm about positive I'd end up hitting the paint by accident more than once in that time. I tried chipping it out of the threads but it won't budge.
My choices at this point are to try to break the bolt free and glue in a new one or just glue the gun in place and cut off the bolt.
Sue - The gun had a syncronizing gear that would interrupt the firing of the gun when the propeller was in the way.