"Paiting Raiden or any other HE 111 1/285th scale" Topic

Hello

All just need some thoughts or ideas on painting, 1/285th scale HE 111, canopies. I got the plane looking good, but I have a method of painting canopies, which I like. My issue is its hard to distinguish the canopy frames on the model itself. just looking at some ideas or thoughts if others have painted them before.

fullmetal

I know they are tough to do. I had to get loads of photos – really I should have bought a 1/72 model and copied that. I painted the plexiglass on mine leaving the frames but I think I'd do it round the other way next time and paint the nose area in your chosen colour(s) then, with good reference, paint in the panel lines on top. The thing is not all the panels and metal work between the glass around the nose are the same thickness.

So good reference from all angles, steady hand and patience. How many have you got to do?

Eight to do, sadly but have 10 JU 88, 12 DO 17Z, several Italian bombers, an others to do later on. Fighters are nice except the coffin canopies of the ME 109's. its just tedious work, I paint the whole thing black then come back over with X-13 Tamiya paint an paint just the glass part of the canopy looks really good, just hard to do on some of these models at this scale you lose a lot of detail quickly. Now GHQ models are awesome, but more expensive an a lot less range in models compared to Raiden an other companies out there.

From what your writing I'd say get a cheap plastic kit and make up the body with the plexiglass in place and paint that from reference material then you'll know it all well enough to replicate at 1/285. If I do more that's what I'm going to do. I loved painting the Raiden Me109's. Have you bough these recently, if so what's the casting quality like? I had read that it wasn't as good as it used to be but you never know if that's a bad sample or more significant.

No they are relatively good quality, I mean there is still the occasional bad one, but for the most part they are a 8 out of 10.

If I was to rank them in quality. I would go GHQ, Museum mIniatures out of UK (great castings, just behind GHQ quality but small selection. Mainly German fighters an bombers, RAF fighters an bombers. An a nice selection of Italian fighters an bombers.) Raiden, CnC, H&R (but from the few I have bought poor quality. Spend way to much time trying to file an make it look reasonable.) Or maybe I'm just to much of a perfectionist when it comes to modeling.

fullmetal

That's good to know I must get some more at some point. I had H&R and Scottia and ditched them to go all Raiden. They've got more in the pipeline but seem slow to get the new stuff out out want although there are release dates.

Can't wait to see what the B17F/G are like and the B25J.

I have found that the biggest challenge in micro-scale aircraft is finding a way to paint the canopies that both looks approximately realistic … AND actually pops out some of the detail that so much effort went into painting.

What I now do is to paint the canopy area in the colors I want the bracings to be. Usually this is the base color of the upper fuselage cammo pattern.

Then I paint each glass panel black.

Then I paint a splash of reflective metallic blue in the center of each panel.

The interesting thing about this approach is that it can be done fairly casually … the pin-point detailing is not critical. The black surrounding the reflective blue has an eye-tricking effect of making the bracework look almost perfect. So even if your black flowed over the brace in one place, and the amount of brace left was too wide in another, it will all appear uniform to the eye.

Here are some Scotia SM.79jr models painted for my Romanian forces. I choose this example because the "hot house" nose is in some ways similar to the He-111.

Notice how visible the panels and bracing are? You don't actually know if there is a green brace between each small panel on the nose, but you assume there is because your eye WANTS to find the pattern. I assure you they are not perfectly painted! But they really come out looking good.

At least … about as good as these old hands can manage.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

[URL=http://s1169.photobucket.com/user/fullmetal20121/media/IMG_1011.jpg.html]

[/URL]

[URL=http://s1169.photobucket.com/user/fullmetal20121/media/IMG_1105.jpg.html]

[/URL]
[URL=http://s1169.photobucket.com/user/fullmetal20121/media/IMG_1098.jpg.html] [/URL]
here is some stuff I have done, I haven't inked an drybrushed yet.

[URL=http://s1169.photobucket.com/user/fullmetal20121/media/IMG_1095.jpg.html]

[/URL]

[URL=http://s1169.photobucket.com/user/fullmetal20121/media/IMG_1016.jpg.html]

[/URL]