This Hien is starting to come together. I made some good progress over the last few days getting the natural metal base paint on and painting the tail. For the base paint I decided on Tamiya's natural metal airframe. This paint comes in a rattle can(which I decanted into my airbrush) and having seen its results on some other models I really liked the look of it. It has a fairly high brightness factor but has a matt look to it which I think represents a somewhat worn natural metal airframe. The other paint I had in my possession, Alclad airframe aluminum ( which I originally purchased to do my tamiya mustang) I found was much brighter and more glossy which was not the look I was going for with this model. I did use some Alclad II airframe aluminum for highlighting but I mixed it with Alclad dull aluminum to what else, dull it down. I used this mixture to do the highlights on the airframe and this can be seen on on the upper wing gun/ammo covers, wing tips, underside panels near the intake and also on the MG shell ejector panels. I also sprayed Alclad A/F aluminum, unmixed on the windscreen and canopy as I wanted these areas to be shiny to show that they might get this way as a result of the ground crew constantly cleaning the windscreen and canopy. The contrast might not show up in the end but hey I thought I would give it a shot. I had no problems with paint lift when taping off the highlighted areas. I did however de-tack the tamiya masking tape I used just to be sure I didn't have any problems. I could have done some more highlighting but felt that the Kawasaki green camo paint I will be using over the bare airframe will cover up most of these contrasted areas. I still have to do some touch ups on the I.D. panels and tail but I am pretty happy with the results.
Here are some shots of the progress. Hope you like em.
Hey thanks guys for checking in and taking the time to post your comments.
You know I didn't make it easy on myself with the yellow ID bands and red tail. For the ID bands as you can see from earlier posts I painted the yellow over the black. For the tail I painted red over natural metal paint. I should of asked you guys but I learned afterward that I could have painted these areas with a white base coat first in order for the yellow and red to go down a lot easier and not have to make as many passes with the airbrush to build up the colour.....Duh. lesson learned. I will keep this in mind for future builds. Us armour modelers don't often have to work with such bright colours so I was rather ignorant of this tip.
The progress continues. I got the left wing painted up. I used a mask for this. I am going to use paint mask as well for the hinomaru's. I have them on order and expect them any day now.