Painting duties

I’ve got a couple of hundred tins of Xtracolour paints in my garage, and yet all I seem to be painting lately is black and white!

Today’s session was primarily centered around the three Hawks, the lower surfaces of the Wellington, and the B-57B, all of which required black. The other main paint duties were some touchup and surface work on the CyberHobby Sea Vixen.

I finished some touch up work on the Global Flyer as well. To avoid an even bigger pain, I had to succumb to one of my least-liked jobs: brush-painting the exterior of an aircraft. I have had an airbrush for almost as long as I have been modeling; it was really one of the first things I bought when I got serious about this being my primary hobby. This is not meant as a slam to the adherents of the hairy stick, but for the last 30 years I have only used a brush for detail areas such as cockpit detailing, maybe the occasional exhaust, and tires. I’m just not terribly good at it, and a bad brush-painting job stands out like maggoty roadkill. So even though there is a fair amount of work involved in masking, I almost never brush paint the camo.

In a somewhat later session, I was able to get the surface coat on the three Hawks, and they all look pretty decent. I also got the color coat on the entire B-57B (only finished part of it the first time) and the underside of the Wellington.

 I know that I haven’t exactly been a fountain of modeling activity this spring, and it may slow down even further for the next few weeks. I’ve found myself a bit of temp work (processing incoming deposits for a non-profit’s capital campaign) which should last a month or six weeks. It’s not my usual line of work (project management) or my usual hourly rate (you don’t want to know how much less) but it does constitute paying work, so I won’t feel like quite so much of a leech in the family income derby. I will be trying to get some things accomplished on the workbench (along with an increased presence at the gym), but sometimes the energy just fizzles before I have a chance to get the the keyboard. Wish me luck!