While building Academy's 1/72nd scale Hawker Tempest I thought it would be a good time to perhaps put something up on how I do my preshading. The basic idea of pre shading is to highlight the panel lines in a dark colour before the standard colour is applied. Then the main color is slowly 'layered' ocer the dark lines until the darker lines are only just showing through.
Here we have the Tempest which has had a fine black sprayed along the panel lines, you don't need to worry about being too acurrate here however you do need to have a reasonably fine line. I find it's easiest to apply lots of thinner to paint and spray lightly.
Once the black has dried we can move directly on to building up the main color. Again here I like to thin the pain down as much as possible which allows me to slowly build up the layers.
The real trick here is to slow build up the paint in layers, stopping after every coat to check the effect. It's important here to physically stop the spraying for a few minutes to let the paint dry a little.
Here I've stopped spraying to check. The dark lines are still plainly visible through the grey so we need to keep going.
Here we have the effect that we're after. We want to stop when you can just notice the dark paint around the panel lines. The effect should be very subtle but if done correctly will really add a lot of depth to all paint jobs.
Next up we'll look at post shading.
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