Glad you were able to find those brushes. I used one today and it was terrific. Holds a better point than my sable brushes.
I started today's session by finally deciding that I was going to leave the kit's unpainted light gray to be the base color for the cockpit. I also decided to use the kit's side panel switches instead of scaping them off for the Eduard PE. But I did decide to scrape off the knobs on the angled panels since I like the Eduard's better. I really enjoy painting knobs and buttons... I masked the tub to just expose the side panels and airbrushed them semi-gloss black.
After pulling all that tape I was pleased with the result.
I found some great pictures of the Thud's ejection seat and used it plus the instructions that came with the resin seat/pilot to color it. The instructions didn't include any information about the seat itself. It's not the light interior gray like the cockpit wall are. Instead it's clearly a medium gray.
The resin seat is very complete, but still has a couple of things missing including that yellow (ejection handle?) on the seat's left side. I airbrushed the gray first.
The resin seat was also missing the red head pad, but the kit's pad was not configured right to just glue on, so I used the fine razor saw to separate the pad from the rest of the molding and then CA'd it to the seat frame.
After gluing I painted it red using Vallejo paint. Although the instruction called out "Olive" and "Olive Green" as the two colors for the flight suit and the Mach suit, I don't have colors by those names. But the ones I do have (Olive Drab and Khaki) look very much like the colors actually printed in the resin seat's instructions, so I used them.
I used a combination of brushes to paint all these details. The seat picture (above) showed the seat cushions to be darker than the frame and the seat belts to be a much lighter gray, so I attempted to match them as well.
There's some wet paint in the above picture which is where the highlights are coming from. I started using Tamiya Retarder for the first time. It improves flow and slows down drying which helps in brush painting the Tamiya colors. The oxygen hose and mask is Tamiya Nato Black. Shoes are semi-gloss black.
I also painted the arms which are hung in a cool painting fixture that I won as a door prize at a Military Modelers Club of Louisville. It was designed and 3D printed at the Advanced Manufuring Processes Lab at University of Louisville Speed School of Engineering. One of our new club members is a technical manager at this facility. It swivels on an enclosed ball bearing.
The arms are Olive Drab with Khaki gloves. The last pieces to paint are the all-important heads. The eye openings are very narrow and I suspect, it will be close to impossible to render the eyes in any meaningful way. You can see those metal extension paying off in holding these small parts.
Here are the two seats sitting in the tub for a status shot.
I really like cockpits! To me, they're the most interesting aspect of aircraft modeling. Next is engines and followed by landing gear. It's way I find modeling drones and UCAVs very dissatisfying. No cockpit!
I'm a pretty basic figure painter. I don't really do shading and shadowing, although I probably will on the facials features. I'm careful, just not that artistic. Once the pilots are done, I really dig into putting the cockpit together with tons of PE.