Thanks everyone.
.....PS. Like your spiders, a new preshading technique?
Exactly, Kirby. I mixed the paint to the exact ratio and painted each individual leg in the location and exact length that I wanted...........
. As I did say, I was really struggling with the brush when I was doing that and I was OK with the crappy job only so long as it was a preshade coat.
Well, I'm happy to report that things went much better today as I spent a very productive morning finishing off the faded EDSG upper camo, I prepared a thin mix of Tamiya Medium Sea Grey and began going lighlty over the surfaces to take away the starkness
Here's a pic when I was part way through, with the left side showing the new treatment and the right remaining untouched so far.
Below shows the more or less finished overall result.
Many close-up pictures of 404 Beaus show very distinct and tiny spots of darker colours over the weather beaten surfaces that I wanted to also replicate. Here's an example:
I achieved this effect by loading very thin Tamiya XF-24 in my brush, removing the diffuser cap and spraying the model at about 30psi pressure from a distance of 2 to 3 inches. I'm quite happy how this turned out:
After a few more final touches which included successive passes of dark and light post-shading, I stopped with these effects before I over-did it and set the model aside to cure. The next step will be to mask the exhaust collector rings and paint those before I give the entire upper surface a coat of Future in preparation for the decals.
Thanks for your kind support guys.