I'm not a fan of Soviet/Russian aircraft design, but this kit, as well as others coming from eastern producers, benefits of a great mold sculpted by a very talented and tedious artist.
There are recessed rivets and overlapped sheets on the "metallic" wings, while the wooden fuselage was kept clean.
This subject was exactly on my taste, giving me the possibility to represent wear and tear on all those different surfaces.
As usually I started with the cockpit which is pretty well furnished, but gives the possibility to add some scratch also.
The construction of the cockpit must be done bearing in mind that the rear turret have to be painted prior to the glueing of the two fuselage parts. Beside that, this turret comes separated in several parts (6 to be more precise, counting the machine-gun too)
I added belts to the chairs and also printed some instrument panels.
After closing the fuselage, I made a special template to scribe the ventral door for the gun position, that was not represented on the kit.
Wanting to represent a specific winter camouflaged aircraft I noticed that the engine cowling was not appropriate for that type. I cannibalized one from a Lavotchikin La7 and scratchbuild the radiator's duct from some plastic tube and the end of German supplementary gas tank.
Fast forward to the painting as being the sole reason for which I started this kit.
I painted the fuselage with a wooden panel color to represent the kind of material used. You have to know that some of the soviet planes were constructed in piano factories.
On the rest I put a layer of resistent metal. All that preparation have been sealed with a semimat varnish to be able to work without fear of smearing it.
Then the underside was sprayed with a fine coat of light blue and the upper side first with scraping medium from AK and then with the traditional cammo of green and black, both colors being water based acrylics from Valejo and AK Interactive. I don't remember codes. I went in the shop and pick-up what I considered to be right.
The light blue on the belly was then polished with a damp tissue with izopropilic alcohol mixed with a bit of water. On the upper sides I started by chipping the paint first with various tools using little quantities of water, then with a stiff brush damped with water and at the end with very fine sandpaper.
This ensured a great variety of scratches and exfoliated paint.
After all that I applied the white distemper using a very diluted mix of acrylic white and a low pressure on the airbrush, trying to fade the white on areas supposed to be abused often by maintenance crew.
Decals was put in the last stage. From the pictures it is apparent that the national markings were repainted after the application of the distemper.
Now, it makes a great team with the Archangelsky Ar2 and this team will be enriched as soon as possible with a Petliakov Pe2 and an Iliushin Il2 Sturmovik from Dakoplast.
Niciun comentariu:
Trimiteți un comentariu