The other day I brought a box of random models for $30. One of them was a WW2 American carrier plane, the Vindicator.
I admit, these planes have never attracted my attention as much as say, the spitfire, the IL2 or Stuka. They mostly look very similar to me. I probably wouldn't have chosen to make it if it hadn't been in the box...
Anyway... the kit is quite nice. It comes with some pre-cut masking tape for the canopy and that helped a lot. Also some photo-etched seatbelts, which isn't something I would usually pay for, as I can make them easily with some tape or sticky-back-plastic.
As usual, I decided to brush paint it with acrylics. My budget for making models is near zero, so once in a while I'll splash out for an item like a can of undercoat paint (Mr surfacer 1000 in this case), but mostly I just make these models with cheap hobby paints from the supermarket (the set of acrylics I used here cost $3).
I started with the cockpit. You won't see much when it's finished, but I do enjoy painting all the bits.
I left some bits attached to the sprue to give me something to hold on to while undercoating. For next time, I have to remember to mask off the back of the clear parts too, because some spray paint particles ended up settling there.
Also a tip for using photo etch. If you have to use superglue, keep it well away from any clear parts of your model. The fumes can react with grease from your finger prints and ruin the finish. Even if you're dry fitting the canopy, don't let wet superglue anywhere near it.
I'm making the plane with the cockpit closed, so according to the instructions, the rear gun is left off. Presumably stored inside the plane.
I didn't bother with the decals for the instrument panel. It's not going to be visible in the finished plane. I had a small window of time to do some painting, and I hadn't assembled the whole model yet, so I decided to paint the clear parts at this point too.
The crew compartment fit pretty well, there was some issue with the triangle brace behind the pilot being too high for the canopy, but I cut it down a bit... won't be visible in the finished plane, in any case.
The fit wasn't too bad. I used rubber bands to keep it together while drying.
I used a silver marker to color the engine parts, as well as the undercarriage, and then gave them a dark acrylic wash for shading. When working on 1/72 models, I usually use all acrylics. Dark washes with some highlights and dry brushing can give a good result, and you don't have to bother with paint thinner headaches.
I detailed all these parts in advance, before undercoating.
Some $2 wood filler worked well enough for the gaps around the cockpit. It's all going to be under paint in the end, so it's not much of a problem.
I left the wheels off, but added the bombs. Next time I won't add any
dangly bits until after painting. They got in the way when I was doing
weathering later.
Undercoated with Mr Surfacer 1000. It's my first try with this, as I usually just paint on the bare plastic with a couple of coats of thin acrylic. The undercoat did make it a little easier to apply my paints, but not as much as I expected. First coat can be seen above. I used kids modelling clay (called "i-clay" here in Korea) to cover the canopy and other pre-painted parts. It was an old batch that my kids had already mixed up all the colors in to a big brownish gray ball.
First coat of thin acrylic. I see lots of people posting pictures like this and asking what's going wrong. Brush panting requires several thin coats, the thinner and more layers the better.
Since the whole thing was going to be one color, I mixed up a pot of base paint. I tried to aim for something a little lighter and more saturated than the final color. Weathering will change the tone and saturation quite a bit.
Getting closer to full coverage. Each layer should be painted in the opposite direction to the previous one; up and down, then left and right. A big brush is needed. If I'm honest, I stopped adding layers too soon. It could have done with an extra layer or two. Oh well, something to remember next time.
Under the plane, dark areas were painted first. Most of these got a touch up with the silver marker.
Next, several layers of gray. Here I used my normal technique of mixing the paint as I went, rather than mixing up a big pot. The advantage of this is that I can start with a darker color and work up to lighter shades in the final layers, giving a pre-shading effect. The disadvantage is that the color isn't uniform and the result can be patchy on a large surface. That's why I prefer small models for brush painting, 1/72 is my favorite.
After the base coat, I added some chipping, again with the silver marker. The marks are too round and splotchy for real chipping, so I went back over their edges with a small brush and some thicker blue base. This left most of the chipping very subtle.
According to pictures, this plane had a dark tail. Apparently before the war, the carrier planes were painted very colorful patterns to enable easy identification. But this also made them easy to spot by the enemy, so these colors were painted over and they switched to a number code, painted on the fuselage, like the British used.
After painting all the base colors, I gave it a coat of varnish. This cheap varnish cost $6 for a pot that seems to last forever. There's a matt version by the same company which will probably be my next purchase, if I find myself with a few extra pennies. I mixed the gloss varnish 50/50 with water, which gives a kind of eggshell coating. Enough to hopefully protect the paint without turning the model in to a shiny beast.
Up until now, I've only used acrylics, but with such a large model, I ended up using oils for the rest of the weathering. Here's a panel line and shading wash.
I made a bit of a mess of the decals at one point. I was experimenting with using a little model cement mixed with thinner as a decal wash. It did make the decals conform to the panel lines... but they melted a bit in some places. I think I need to get the mix right before I try that again. I touched them up with acrylics before varnishing.
After the excess is wiped away, and some light color oils were brushed on for highlights/ faded paint effects. Also some streaking from the engine and machine-guns.
Weathering added to the bottom of the plane too.
Top view.
Bottom view.
After weathering.
And some close up details:
The chipping is visible close up, but not very obvious from far away. I think the varnish was a bit thin in the end, and it didn't really protect the paint well enough from being rubbed off during weathering. That's another thing to consider for next time. Maybe I'll splash out on the matte varnish so I can protect the paint and avoid it becoming too shiny.
A final montage of the process:
If you'd like a python script that makes a nice montage of your progress like this and also resizes all your images for easy posting on a blog, there's a script I wrote here.
Put your images in a folder called "images", then create a folder called "export". Place the script in the same root folder as these two, and run it. You need python and PIL (python imaging library) to get it to run.
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