This comes in the form of a Hawker Typhoon, possibly one of my favourite WW2 aircraft. One of the few stories my grandfather told me about his wartime experiences was of watching these aircraft swooping down in near vertical dives to unleash their rockets on German positions.
This model was one I picked up earlier this year for less than £3. It's been assembled for a while, and being such a low cost model, it's not a great fit. I spent some time with it trying to fill in the gaps, but not too sure I made a great job of it.
So, here's the photos:
First, the underside - the aircraft had been sprayed Matt black primer. The underside was then painted in Sky Gray (Vallejo Model Color 70.989). This took a coat or two. The plastic kit doesn't have the detail of the Battlefront model, and you can still see where I filled in the landing gear spaces with green stuff.
Next I used London Grey (Vallejo Model Color 70.836) trying to follow the patterns from the pictures I found online. Apparently the camo by this stage in the war was applied in the factory using rubber masks, so it was more or less standardised.
I then filled the gaps in with Reflective Green (Vallejo Model Color 70.890). One of the difficult parts was getting the line between the underside and the top colours right. I also had to decide what colour to do the guns - I couldn't tell from the pics whether these were a gunmetal colour, so I decided just to go for the camo colour that was nearest them.
A pic of the almost finished Tiffie. The guide I had said there was a sky blue band around the fuselage before the tail - I didn't lighten the blue I used enough, but I am still happy with the shade. I may lighten it later. The rockets I used Russian Uniform for (Vallejo Model Color 70.924) and for the propeller and leading edge of the wings Flat Yellow (Vallejo Model Color 70.953). The exhaust outlets were done in Brass (Vallejo Model Color 70.801). For the rocket pylons I decided to go with the base Sky Grey underside colour. Propeller blade were tidied up in black, and the canopy was painted on using Russian Uniform and some of the dark blue colour just on the black of the canopy. The tail wheel also was touched up in black. I've still the decals to apply, which will include the black and white invasion stripes.
Below are some shots of the model so far - I have still to decide on a wash (I am considering Army Painter mid tone).
Not the tidiest paint job ever!
Mate it looks fine. Remember, we are playing with tiny scale figures that are seen from at least 4 feet away. I hand painted my markings on my Tiffie, including the invasion stripes. Up close it looks right naff, but from 4-5 feet away, I'm a frikken Picasso! Wait, I mean Michaelangelo! :P
ReplyDeleteThat will be a nice little addition,
ReplyDeleteBrings me back to childhood building hundreds of 1/72 scale WW2 planes.
Thanks guys, I am quite pleased with how it looks - I just know it's nowhere near the standard of some of the stuff I was using as reference material! Some of those 1/72 scale models are stunning.
ReplyDeleteThe decals will really help - main thing I am wondering about is whether to Army Painter varnish it or just do a matt varnish and leave it as is. I've done no highlighting or anything to it, this is basically just the main colours blocked in! Not even sure how I would highlight something thats got mixed colours like this! Any thoughts?
Looking nice.
ReplyDelete