Pig Iron head competition reminder...finishes this Sunday.

Just to remind you there are only two days left on my Pig Iron head competition, click on the link to be redirected to the competition page.

Valkyrie painting development.

Okay the Valkyrie is 90% complete, weathering is done, I'm just going to hold off painting the landing gear, weapons and sensors till I've gotten to the same stage with my vulture. Chipping was done with a brush and VMC hull red, concentrating it round leading edges. Decided to not do any rust, as in desert environments, rust wouldn't develop (look at Mojave Airport ) the majority of weathering will be sand, so paint will be removed like a sand blaster. Extra weathering was provided by Promodeller dirt washes.

This is Alpha plane of Echo flight, of the 1st squadron of the 590th CAS wing, fleet Ultima Segmentum. Squadron motto "Strength before pride." 

Valkyrie painting in progress.

Just a post showing the PIP on my valkyrie.

 Pre-shading.

Desert camouflage application.

Thanks for looking.

Desert camo schemes

So this is just a blog post detailing my thought process for both the vulture and valkyrie, I used to do these for design and technology as a design brief and I think it will help out with some of the eventual problems, if you're not interested in long posts please look away now.

What colours?

Desert camo is a must, therefore what schemes.

1. A single coat (most likely to be applied by lazy servitors, easy and looks okay but will require more effort to look good.)
2. Dual colour camo scheme, effective and will look good.
3. More complex camo schemes, a large chance of it looking "busy".

Examples:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2360/1672107197_913c5ce9cf.jpg
BF110 RAF Museum london

from 291st DKOK blog I encourage you to visit
An excellent example of a balanced camo scheme.

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/3043/bruntinthorp2249.jpg

A desert Pink, a little too pink for my tastes.

http://media.defenseindustrydaily.com/images/AIR_F-16_in_KA2-Desert_lg.jpg

Too busy, wouldn't look very good on a model this size.

http://www.florymodels.co.uk/lightning-royal-saudi-air-forc/

Another good example, easy to do and will look good.

http://www.gatwick-aviation-museum.co.uk/victor/graphics/victor1.jpg
Victor in "hemp" a light desert camo.

My personal favorite scheme is desert pink, though realistic and it should blend in well with the desert sand. Though I don't want to have someone when I'm playing question my choice of pink valks and vultures. So compromise would be VMC Iraqi sand, which is sand with a hint of pink. I really like the 291st DKOK scheme though, but a differing camo scheme in the style of the BF101, but with a slightly reduced amount of squiggles, in a brown, probably Citadel Graveyard earth. As the aircraft are in a CAS (close air support) role, I'm not sure if there is any point in painting the bottom of the aircraft in a lighter colour (don't know the technical name).

Also if you can't tell my favorite aircraft ever is the HP Victor.

Weathering

A mixture of promodeller washes, gw washes and oils will be used, I will be making chipping using the good old sponge technique (I could use hairspray but the undercolour would be too dark as I want a washed out desert look.) 

Preshading

Will be done in all panel lines, pretty standard don't have to go through it.

All other areas including weapons will be painted VGC Black. Engines on the vilture will be painted similarly to the Valkyrie engines with masking tape to cover the painted areas.

So yeah list of materials:

Primer: Tamiya fine surface primer.

Preshading: VGC Charred brown

Basecoat: VMC Iraqi Sand

2nd coat: CC Graveyard earth

Weathering: Promodeller washes, CC washes, mig and forgeworld pigments, windsor and newton oils.

I should have pictures of the WIP tomorrow.

Sorry for the epic long post, thanks for looking.

(I do not own any of these pictures, I have endeavored to link back and give credit to people, if you are the rights holder to this and take issue, please tell me and I will remove them.)

Air tuesday

So since Saturday I haven't done very much, taken two days off doing nothing except watch Stargate SG1. Today I finally started work on the two flyers I bought ages ago for my failed airborne IG army. One being a Vulture the other a vendetta, under the guise of working on my alpha legion army (they need aircraft right?) Now I've stopped flying them around making airplane noises and dakka dakka noises (I'm still a teenager and gorramit I'm not going to stop) I have pictures.

Waiting on magnets to mangnetise the weapons, so the vulture can have interesting load-outs.

Painted parts so far.

For the engines I was looking around and found this website tutorial aircraftresourcecenter bare metal weathering which is very nice, but not extremely detailed and with only burnt umber oil washes, gw washes and promodeller wash I got something to this effect, which isn't half as good, but looks better than just metal (I may get some tamiya clear at some point.) The cockpit is pretty basic, didn't spend a huge amount of time on it because the canopy will cover it and there isn't a huge amount you can do with it.

Both will be getting a weathered desert camo scheme, but first I need to finish the gap filling on the vulture and then its engine.

Thanks for looking.

Pig Iron head competition reminder...one week left!

Just to remind you there is exactly one week left on my Pig Iron head competition, click on the link to be redirected to the competition page.