Thank you for all of the positive comments! I am fast approaching the painting stage but I will have to do some prep work before the camo gets sprayed on.
The wing tip was repaired.
The kit de-icer got lost. I am constantly pinging small parts from my Tamiya tweezers into space. So I made a de-icer from wire and glued it into place. The bomb racks were also glue in.
I decided to glue in the radiators prior to painting.
Some PE details get glued next to the radiator housings.
The canopy opening is masked and the upper cowling is held in place with Silly Putty. She is almost ready for pre-shading.
A good time to add the Hispano cannons.
Let the painting begin! First I am going to establish an initial metal finish layer for chipping effects. This will be constrained to the fuselage sides near the cockpit and down to the wing roots. Tamiya Black is used as base for the Alclad Aluminum.
Since I have black in the airbrush, I go ahead and preshade the panel lines on the bottom.
Alclad Aluminum is sprayed on the black and then that coat is covered with hairspray.
The rest of the pre-shading can now occur. First, the panel lines.
The next step is a technique that I developed a few builds ago as a way to establish some depth to the color scheme. It's a variation of what one modeler calls "black basing". Using a very diluted mix of black sprayed at low pressure, I "scribble" thin black lines everywhere. Yes, it looks very messy and crazy busy but the beautiful thing about pre-shading is the modeler-controlled ability to scale the effect as far back as zero.
At this point, I discovered a glue seam that had not been fully corrected so I took a pause to fix it.
The repaired area is pre-shaded and now we are ready to spray camo colors next!