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Pacific Helldiver

Paint used for the tri-colour scheme was Lifecolor acrylics. This paint is much thicker than normal for acrylics. A good thing because it goes further. The manufacturers recommend distilled water for thinning but I use my own concoction. Distilled water, acrylic retarder and auto windscreen washer fluid (the cheaper the better and the colour does not affect the paint). This combination seems to stop the acrylic paint drying in on the tip of the needle. If you try this practice first, as the paint will be very thin and must be built up in multiple layers-just what is required for painting over a pre-shaded model.

White is sprayed first, then masked. Followed by none specular intermediate blue followed by glossy sea blue. The underwing demarcation and the wing leading edge were masked with Tamiya masking tape, for a sharp edge. The other demarcations were initially sprayed freehand, but I wasn't at all happy with the results. I therefor tried re-spraying the demarcations again, no better. I didn't realise that I had a problem with my airbrush and thought I was loosing it. To overcome the problem I tried masking with White Tack (sticky stuff for hanging posters and the like). I wanted an even demarcation, so I rolled the White Tack between 2 boards to get even thickness sausages. They were then positioned and to prevent overspray I used low tack scotch tape. I think the results speak for themselves. I am certainly very pleased. My Hurricane, for the Battle for Britain campaign was masked the same way except that the sausages were flattened, cut in half, lengthways. When positioned, the cut edge gives a sharper division.