Wraping up the paint job on my 1/72 OA-4M and was curious as to what you guys do to make realistic look panel lines. All I have ever done in the past is light tracing with graphite or maybe a light wash. Just wondering if ther eis a better method. Is there a tutorial online anywhere, or any articles i could read on the topic?
Thanks! Andrew Nelles
I think for 1/72 scale, what you are doing is the best route. Being as small as 1/72 is, I dont think that a dark wash would look right.
The brute force method is to spray a gloss coat over the panel and, once it is dry, to brush a dark wash into the recessed lines (or a lighter wash over dark surfaces, to simulate dust instead of grime). Use an acrylic wash over enamel gloss coat, or an enamel wash over acrylic gloss, or the wash won't flow well.
A subtler method is pre-shading. Once your model is ready for painting, spray a first coat of grey or white primer, to mask any base colour differences due to resin or scratch parts, putty, etc. Then, airbrush a dark colour over panel lines and shaded areas, such as corners, access hatches, aileron hinges, etc. Once this is dry, airbrush the camouflage colours in two or three light coats. Since no paint is completely opaque, except the very dark shades, the dark-over-primer pattern will usually stand out through the camouflage coats enough to mark panel lines. On an aircraft model, when done with some attention to the airflow on the real plane, this can get you a real show-stopper.
A refinement to this method is to hold the airbrush at a 90° angle to spray the preshading, and to hold it at a 45° angle to spray the camouflage colours. Thus, camouflage colours cannot reach the bottom of the engraved panel lines and you get both the effects of pre-shading and washing.
A third method is post shading. You paint the camo as usual and then overspray panel lines with a slightly darkened camo coulour and/or panels with a lighter colour. Alternatively, you can mask along a panel line and spray ligthly over the line with Tamiya's X-19 Smoke.
You can also use pastel powders, or a sharp B or 2B paper pencil to
However, on a 1/72 model, panel lines are usually grossly out of scale and one sees all too often models that look like they've been lifted out of a 3D drafting program... Like always, check your references, on some planes, panel lines were almost invisible.
They're grossly out of scale in 1/48, 1/32, and 1/24 too - just not as bad...
Which is why in 1/72 I think they should be done in a subdued fashion as much as possible. No# 2 or 4 pencil with a very sharp point would be worth a try to me ;)
Did that on a 1/72 F/A-18D; and on my 1/32 Hunter and first 1/32 F-14A. I can post a couple shots on ABMS if you'd like to see the results. I could have used a finer point on the 1/72 Hornet, I think...
I've been using an HB drafting pencil for all of my panel lines in all scales for some time now. I have an umber one, but I haven't tried it out yet.
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