RNZAF Hasegawa P-40M: Part Seven - Weathering

Happy new year to you all.  Yesterday (New Year's Day) I had a shocking head ache all day brought on by celebrating the New Year with the neighbours.  It will be last drink for a while as I am taking part in The Dryathalon.  I aim to not drink any alcohol for the whole month with the aim to raise money for Cancer Research UK.  Feel free to sponsor me if you like, all donations will be very gratefully accepted, just click on the link and hit he "donate" button.  Thanks.

http://www.justgiving.com/dryathlete-jamie-haggo

Onto the model.  The P-40 is pretty much finished, so much so attention has turned to the base but more of that in the next installment.

Oil dot weathering

My favoured method of weathering is using oils.  However, as a base I applied a filter, this is a very thin wash, more of a dirty thinners really.  The aim is to blend the camouflage and to impart a grimy feel to the model.  For this I normally us AK Interactive's Winter Streaking Grime which is a nice dirty grey green tone, I thin it right down with White Spirit and then apply with a soft brush.

Now for the oils themselves.  The aim is to local filters.  Note, I use tiny dots of oil paints, for a green camouflage such as this I find it's best to add a little yellow and bright green, this will ensure chromatic richness.  Just using white and buff with wash out the colour leaving it too bleached and in extreme, chalky.

The oil is worked into the surface using a damp brush, don't have it too damp, just moist enough to work the oil paint.  Whatever you do don't streak it back!  Aeroplanes do not fade in this way and it is not at all realistic.

The effect is really subtle, almost too subtle when a model such as this has a "busy" surface with all the chips etc.  The other advantage to using oils is that a realistic smooth metal sheen is imparted.

Note I have repainted the centre of the roundels blue, my thanks to Pete Mossong for the steer.

The underside is done in the same way but I leave out the strong colours such as green, yellow and blue.  In this case just UN Dirty White, Buff and Shadow Brown from Abteilung.  The latter is a very versatile tone and I use it constantly.  In these next pictures you can see the grimy tone it imparts.  I also added a tiny bit of deep rust in the flap area.

For the white areas on top I had to go quite careful.  It would be very easy to do too much but the advantage with oils is they remain workable for a long time.  Here's the upper surface of the tail plane in progress.

With the main of the weathering done attention turned to the canopy.  The clear areas had a mist of very diluted Tamiya XF-4 which is Zinc Chromate, this will give the characteristic yellowish tone (although the camera didn't really pick this up).  Then a very dilute mix of Black, Neutral Grey and Red Brown gave it a dark, dirty tone.

Now it was time for all the fiddly bits.  I won't bore you as you can see for yourself the photos but what you will see is the spinner and prop.  The spinner had originally been painted white but then over sprayed with red hence the chipping.

Also the undercarriage legs were detailed with photo etch and heavily weathered.  The base coat was a mix of Alclad Dark Iron and Dark Aluminium, it was then chipped with Vallejo German Camo Black Brown applied with a sponge.  To finish, a wash using the Shadow Brown oil paint was applied followed by a dry brushing with the Dark Rust oil paint.

I'll leave you with some photos of the finished (almost) model.  Next I'll be using a few pigments to finish off and building the base.  So until then, take care.