1/48 Tamiya F4U-1 Corsair

Gallery Article by Andrew Marriott on Apr 8 2011

 

This is the wonderful Tamiya F4U-1/2 kit done straight out of the box with the exception of some Eduard seatbelts.  Model was painted using Model Master Acrylics, simply because these are about the only paints I can get sent via airmail here to Guam!  The technique is a mix of what I call multi shading, which involves both pre and post shade techniques.  First I lay down the plain base color straight from the bottle, followed by the usual lightening of the inside of panels.  I’m not subtle about the color difference, the plane looks like a patchwork quilt at this point.   

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This is then followed by a very thin coat of the base color over the top.  This starts the blending process.  Gloss coat and decals come at this point.  After they dry I flat coat with a touch of Buff or other light color.  I then go back to the middle of some panels, and areas of high sun exposure, with more flat coat mixed with about 10% of buff or white.  The percent is pretty much random, which I think adds interest.  At this point I’ll apply a panel line wash followed by overall tinting with artists oils, much like filter coats when building armor.

Once the filter coats are dry I go back and do the old very thin mix of black/red brown over panel lines on heavily used areas.  In the case of the Corsair I also went back with some very thin white to add streaks, again much like with armor.  A Prismacolor pencil was used for paint chipping.  Finally I went back over the whole thing with a flat clear coat.  This final coat still had a tiny amount of white in it, as I didn’t clean the brush after the streaking step.  Worked out alright, lucky for me I hadn’t been painting bright WW1 colors instead of white!  Decals were from the kit.  Had a good time with this kit.  Modeling out here in Guam can add a little challenge as supplies are pretty hard to come by.  Improvise, Adapt, Overcome!

Andrew Marriott

Photos and text © by Andrew Marriott