R1: Sukhoi T50

Past Reviews

Step by step......

1. Painting Boris.

Trying to paint any detail on a 1:72 scale figure is pretty difficult. The detail provided on the model is pretty good but hard to paint even when using an '00' brush. Does that matter? Maybe not. I'll have to see how it looks in-situ before adding unnecessary detail that the eye really cannot perceive.

It's all a matter of scale.

2. Smoother Paintwork

Up till now I have been using undiluted enamel paint. For this project I wanted to test out using a dilute mixture (roughly 10% white spirit) to see if this would help to a) eliminate obvious brush strokes in the finish and b) leave the panel lines more prominent for later pin washing.

The panel lines are quite subtle in this model (Fig.4) and would soon dissapear after a thick application of paint.

3. First coat

The first thinned coat went on well and flowed far more easily than undiluted.

The down side is that the paint starts to dry out really quickly. You need to keep adding spirit to keep it flowing which makes the mix progressively weaker (6).

4. Masking

I don't usually bother with masking on 1:72 models. However, I think that in this case, with such geometric camouflage, it was really worth the trouble to get those sharp corners.

A lot of modern planes now seem to have adopted this move to geometric shapes. It certainly is confusing and does play cool tricks with the shadows (8).

5. Metallic paints

This is one area where you need to purchase. It is impossible to 'mix up' these specialised colours from a standard palette.

I purchased Revell's Bronze and Gold paints especially. Neither of them really came near the actual T50 engine colour (see Background info) so I added a touch of Red to the Bronze to achieve a more Copper look. This was then darkened further with some black. Adding the black also reduced the polished metal look which was an advantage in this case.