Model Aircraft Kit Making - Simple Weathering Guide

A guest post by Frank LeGrand

For this guide I have taken the model Spitfire that I built when I was compiling my Model Kit Making Guide, and spent some time weathering where necessary to aim to make it look a bit more real.

As when making a model from the start research is one of the first things to do. I checked out the web to find some pictures of the most common places to find wear & tear on Spitfires.


The first things I had to do were remove the propellers, canopy & exhaust nacelles.

The main wear and tear from pictures I have seen appears to be around the nose, wings roots, and cockpit and around any moving parts on the wings.

A good tip that I do is paint any major wears areas silver (or whatever colour the real aircraft would be BEFORE painting). In this case I painted the nose silver and the wing roots. I dry brushed some silver paint around the cockpit where the canopy would have been sliding open & closed, and also on the tail.

Once the silver paint on the nose & wings was dry I then painted the camouflage colour over the silver. I let this dry, and then I used a sharp blade to scrape away the camouflage paint where necessary to reveal the silver below. This is very effective and I feel looks a lot more authentic than painting silver over the camouflage.

Once this way done, I used a wash to highlight oil & dirt on certain areas.

The wash that I used was basic watercolour paint, in this case black. Just paint the areas you want to highlight and the black wash will naturally run into any recesses. When dry, carefully clean off the excess wash with clean water. I used a cotton bud and a fine brush to do this.

I also painted the exhausts and the underside of the aircraft to show signs of dirt.

I also painted the leading edges of the propeller blades silver.

That's it, once cleaned up and the props & canopy replaced the model was done.

Notes:

Aim for realistic effects, remember the scale of the model and think about how much wear & tear there would actually be. Resist the temptation to do too much, STOP when it looks real, this is the point it is finished.

Practice on an old kit or bits of plastic to get it right BEFORE trying it for real.

The wash I used was water based because the kit was painted in acrylic. Make sure the wash IS NOT the same type of paint as the kit or things will go wrong very quickly. You could use a chalk wash if you wish instead.