In case of the Kittyhawk, I had a bit of a problem with paint selection. Sword Miniatures doesn't provide references to specific paint manufacturers, only generic paint names such as Azure Blue or Mid Stone. Luckily, when it comes to Allied airplanes in North Africa, it's pretty easy to figure out what colors are historically correct. After a short online research session, all that remained was the decision front is what brand of colors to use. Based on ease of availability and previous experience, I choose to go yet again with Lifecolor acrylics - UA098 Azure Blue for the underside and UA097 Middle Stone / UA092 Dark Earth for camouflage scheme of upper surfaces.
For the sake of personal challenge, I decided to paint the cammo scheme without any masks. Not sure if it's historically correct, but I wanted to paint a soft-edged cammo pattern for the longest of times and this opportunity was to good to be allowed to pass by. Also, this way I would get the opportunity to train my handling of the airbrush. Also, I wanted for this model to have a camouflage with feathered edges. To get better control of spraying pattern, I switched to 0.3 mm needle in my Badger 150. A short training session on a piece of paper revealed noticeable difference in handling - on positive side, the spray pattern was (as expected) much thinner. On the negative side, the airbrush showed much higher tendency for clogging. Thinning the paint a bit more normally did alleviate this problem a bit. Increasing the air pressure did not - the only result of that action was much higher tendency for unintentional spatter and spidering patterns.
Once I've gotten a bit of a grasp of new characteristics of my airbrush, painting freehand actually turned out to be a rather enjoyable experience. I'm happy to say that I managed to get most of camouflage right on first try. Places where I messed up were easily corrected with a second pass with the airbrush. I also discovered that minor spatter spots can be corrected with a normal brush, without noticeable blemishes on the finish.
Middle Stone cammo pattern applied. Once again, I managed to pretty much eradicate the shade effect I tried to create with black lines outlining the panel edges.
How to make life difficult for oneself - initially I decided not to mount the drop tank on this model.
I then changed my mind... but not before being done with all the painting of the airplane body. Once the drop tank was in place, it had to be painted and I was pretty sure that this would result in unintentional oversprays on already painted areas. In the end, common kitchen plastic foil turned out to be perfect as masking material for already painted areas.
I then changed my mind... but not before being done with all the painting of the airplane body. Once the drop tank was in place, it had to be painted and I was pretty sure that this would result in unintentional oversprays on already painted areas. In the end, common kitchen plastic foil turned out to be perfect as masking material for already painted areas.
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