Yeah, sorry there Lanc, it was a 'quick reply'.....
I reckon they wouldn't have taken that long to paint, these paint schemes on the Nf's....I'm a qualified Auto Refinisher besides being a Signartist, and one just reduces the spray-fan nozzle from it's usual oblong pattern, down to a round one, then it's just a matter of the distance of the spray-gun from the surface that's being painted....for that pattern, it's a 'swiggly' movement keeping the gun moving all the time....for a blotch pattern, it's just a series of very quick squirts, blotch, blotch, blotch, and one can create it with different colours....
The Germans were really into colours, as Erich's pointed-out, their 'lozenge' pattern has had a rebirth down here lately, they had a big Airshow recently down in the South Island of WWI fighters, something like 5 Fokker Triplanes and others, including the British ones, all flying around in mock dogfights, and those lozenge pattern colours were simply amazing to see....some can actually be very hard to see at a distance against the ground, a fact they later employed with success in WWII.....
To do the NF camo on a model, by brush it's best to have it loaded, then wipe-off most of it on a cloth so it's sort-of more a 'dry-brush', then blotch, blotch etc., and the effect of a dry-brush gives a soft edge around the blotch....If you have an airbrush, crank the pressure and the jet right down, and for the blotch, it's a very light, quick squirt, and for squiggles, keep it moving in tight squiggle patterns, it's a trick of the right jet-down of the spray and the distance from the model's surface that will define the 'fluffy-edged' effect....- It's years since I've done models, but it was my favourite part, right down to dry-brushing exhaust and gun stains with matt black, and little dashes of gray to denote flaking paint on a 'well-used' fighter....Won a prize for it once !!......Thinking of getting back into it sometime, maybe 1/48th scale....Any of you guys into models ???
Love the pic, Mossy, it looks like that is the last Mosquito flying, RR299, that unfortunately crashed in 1996...I'm also actually using that very same lettering style [Magneto] on a Chemist shop at present, but in a handpainted gold-chrome finish....Magneto looks very much like the style used in Car-names that were made out of chrome during the '50's and '60's, that they put around on the vehicles....