We can stop making every panel line as black as as space on a moonless, starless, blackhole filled night! Here's a beautifully built Monogram 1/72 B-1 (which I had _NO_ clue that the Revell Germ boxed version had decals for Grand Forks!) that has been visually damaged (in my opinion) by filling every single panel line with flat black. I've SEEN the Bone up close, and from a distance. You NEVER see panel lines. You might see some fiber glass or zinc chromate, maybe a bit of Aluminum, but if ANYTHING the panel lines are bright colored.
Kudos to this guy on a FANTASTIC build up of a difficult piece. I also want to point out he did a good job of adding stretched sprue or wire for the nose pitot tubes. And the pilot figures are fantastic as well. An incredibly well photo-documented build up.
You won't hear me disagreeing. A little variation in shading and some weathering is one thing. But all this pre and post shading that's in vogue now just makes it look like a dirty toy, not like the real thing. Yeah it was a grat build otherwise.
If I add a wash, I color it appropriately to the color of the panels. I use a lighter grey for white, tan, etc. finish, saving the black wash for dark colors like blue, etc. One needs to look at prototypes once in awhile :-)
I like to use HB pencil lead - it looks about right, and if you stay you can simply erase it and do it over. And once you put some dullcote over it it gets a bit more subtle.
HB is a drafting grade for lead - it's the same a #2 pencil. This is REALLY easy on a kit with recessed panel lines, and works just as well on smaller kits with raised lines - just sand them off smooth, paint, and draw them back with a straight edge. Way scale.
I'll use either .5mm or a .3mm Pentel drafting pencil to draw my panel lines in once the color coats are on. .3mm is pretty thin, and tends to beak a lot, though. I'll sometimes use a .5mm and sand the tip to an elliptical point to get a fine line - that works, too.
Also, you can use colored artist pencils - I have some silver and umber ones, but I haven't found the best and most consistent way to sharpen them for this application yet...
The HB lead can also be used to give a worn look to paintwork. Just get an ordinary HB pencil and sharpen it with a pencil sharpener. Take the lead powder and wood shavings produced and rub it gently into walkway areas with a dry fingertip. The wood shavings damage the paint surface slightly, but if you do it gently enough, not enough to cut entirely through the paint layer.
The best thing I have ever found is "track dirt" weathering powder intended to weather the track bed on model railways (railroads). Lightly dab it along the panel lines and the edges of the panels. Then get a wide, flat, dry brush and gently brush the surfaces in the correct direction - for an aircraft in the direction of the airflow, for a vehicle from top to bottom, the direction that rain flows.
Another trick I learned was from a model railway magazine a few years ago. It was in an article about weathering railway carriages and the author reckoned that weathering should be carried out in the same manner as it is in real life. The carriage will go into service and get dirty. Then after a few weeks, the shedmaster will notice how dirty it is and he will put a gang of cleaners to work. They'll clean the carriage, but they'll always miss bits. The carriage then goes back into service and the whole cycle starts all over again.
The recommendation was to weather your model railway item subtly. When it starts to look good and you think "I need to put just a *little* bit more on...", then that is the time to STOP. Get the cleaners in and use a Q-tip to gently clean individual panels on the model. Get the model cleanish and start weathering again.
Okay... so it's a slow process, but at least you will get plenty of practice. And the majority of the muck will be in those little nooks and crannies where the cleaners and the Q-tip can't reach very well - just like on the real thing.
Oh... oil stains... Next time you make a pot of coffee, take the dregs of the previous pot and put them in a bottle. When they have cooled down, you can use the mixture to simulate oil stains on engine blocks. I've also watered it down a bit (and added a tiny bit of washing-up liquid aka dish soap to the mix to get rid of surface tension) and used it as fuel stains from filler caps. Place a droplet on the filler cap and let it flow downwards naturally. On an aircraft such as a Spitfire or F-4 which get a lot of oil stains on the belly, then I also place droplets on leaky points and then blast them from the nose of the aircraft with air from the airbrush to simulate the slipstream.
Hey, someone paid the $65 plus $449.99 for the model. Doesn't sound like the seller has a problem. In his defense, that must have been some packing job, maybe in a wooden box.
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