Written by 5:31 pm On the Bench

WIP : Italeri 1/72 EF-111A Raven Pt. 3

I’ve been a big fan of Gary Wickham of ScaleSpot and is constantly amazed at his detailed work. In his 1/32 Mosquito build, he showed a method of breaking up the monotony of a single color scheme so I thought I’d try it here but in a simpler form. The first step is to spray random straight lines with white over the black primer base.

As usual, with my heavy trigger finger, I’m not very neat at it.

Going with a very thinned Mig AMMO Light Gray (2 parts paint 4 parts thinner) and a low pressure I then slowly painted the bottom. Each pass is very light and it takes 3 to 4 passes before I see the color appearing.

It took a while but when I was done I go a nice patchy look with a lot of variations in color. I ended up going 2 rounds with painting the bottom with a day to cure in between. Frankly I’ve never had to spend so much time painting 1 color but I like what I’m seeing.

The demarcation line between the 2 grays are solid so it was a simple matter of masking the bottom to prevent overspray.

I went with Vallejo Model Air US Grey for the darker gray shade in the same thinning ratio. Also like the previous gray, I ended up going through 2 sessions of painting with a day of curing in between.

In the beginning the two shades didn’t look much different. But given some time to cure, they became more distinct.

I like how the subtle variation shows through.

The leading edge of the tailfin is a different gray compared to the tailfin and photos I’ve found shows that no two Ravens have the same shade of gray for this. I decided to go with Game Color Stonewall Grey for mine.

I used the same color for the LERX (?). Last to be painted was the nose. Like the leading edge of the tailfin, the gray is different on various Ravens I’ve seen so I mixed a little AMMO Gunship Gray into Game Color Stonewall Grey for this one.

Painting is now done, which went smoother than expected. Because I was spraying very thinned acrylic paint, the airbrush tip didn’t dry as often as usual and clean up was also easier.

At this point, I’m not sure if the painting is over or under done. Guess I’ll only know when weathering begins.

Build Log
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

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