Markings & insignias

Now for the most intimidating part for me, the markings and insignias. For some reason these have always been an unpleasant part of the painting process for me, and I often rush to get it over with, causing me to make mistakes. Let's slow down and take a look at the process...

First step was to draw up artwork for all markings and insignias on my computer (I use Adobe Illustrator for this step). Once the artwork is drawn to size on my PC, I print it out and test fit it to the areas to be applied. Pretty much all of my markings and insignias are then hand cut from 8 x 10 sheets of airbrush Frisket mask.

I have a small light table that allows me to trace my printouts when cutting the frisket masks with a very sharp X-acto knife. Once I have them all cut I move on to actually shooting the paint through them onto the plane.

The top of the wing was pretty simple, just a single mask for the white German cross. Even I should be able to get this one right, eh? The bottom of the wing is just a little more complicated since the German crosses are two color (black & white).

To do that, I cut one mask, making cuts for all black and white edges. I apply the sheet to the wing, then pull the masks over white areas first. Once the white is shot (with an airbrush) and dry, I re-apply the mask and pull the material over the black areas. Now I shoot the black and then pull all masking off when all is dry.

For the Swastikas on the tail, I did it a little differently. For these markings, I cut two masks. One is the overall outline, which will be white. The other is the same shape, but "choked down" to a slightly offset outline inside the white outline. I put the larger mask down first and shoot the white. Once that is dry, I apply the smaller mask over top of the first mask, taking care to perfectly center it within the background mask. I then shoot my black and remove all masking.

Moving on to the sides of the fuselage, I'll repeat each of the first two techniques that I just went over. The black and white crosses get done with a single mask sheet just like the ones on the wing bottom were done. The black number "3" (with red outline) is done with two mask sheets just like the Swastika was done.

I do these both simultaneously to minimize color changes in the airbrush. Actually, I did these at the same time as the Swastika so I could shoot all the white at once. Again, on the cross, I shot the white first, then recovered it, opened up the black and shot it second. On the number "3" I shot the red through a large mask first, then laid the smaller mask over top and shot the choked down black area second.

Whenever you shoot markings like this you are bound to get a little "blow-under" and/or seepage around the edges of some of the masks. Usually it's very minor and I just use an artist's brush to manually go back and touch up by hand.

If you prefer, you can certainly purchase masks for these markings already designed and cut for you from vinyl. I just prefer to save time and money and to it myself. As long as they are not to intricate and detailed, I find that working with clear frisket is beneficial as you can see through to the surface behind it when positioning the masking material.

When the masks are very small or detailed, I'll then opt for a machine cut vinyl mask as you'll see in the next steps...

Tackling the cowl

Now this really had me concerned. Getting that stripe pattern properly masked, aligned straight, evenly spaced, and aligned with various landmark features of the cowl was going to be interesting.

First I just shot the white areas freehand with no masks... no need to mask. Next I masked only the front ring of the cowl and freehand shot the yellow areas. There is a two inch gap between the white and yellow on the sides, so masking wasn't needed there.

With the white and yellow properly dried, I then went through the arduous process of masking the white stripes and yellow belly in preparation for the black coats. I used blue tape to mask the stripes, but for the area where the JG1 Red Eagle insignia goes (left side only), I decided to get vinyl masks cut.

I drew up the JG1 insignia artwork in Illustrator and sent them to a local Auto Trim Design shop where they cut the masks in both positive and reverse images from a very low-tack vinyl stock. With the large circle mask applied over the tape, I shot the black stripes first.

Next, I removed all masking and applied the vinyl mask for the circular black diamond shape. When that dried, I removed the mask and laid down the vinyl for the red eagle and shot it. I found that the low-tack vinyl worked very, very well on WC paints. The edges were clean as a whistle and the vinyl came up easy with no lifting of the paint.

Misc items

While all the previous work was drying and curing, I shot some of the other small miscellaneous items that needed attention.

First, I wanted to paint my "flying prop" instead of leaving it natural wood. I sanded my
Zinger 20 x 8-10 prop lightly to scuff the surface, then shot RLM 70 using WC paint.

I also shot RLM 70 on the two main wheels, and then RLM74 on the pitot tube and black on all the gun barrels.

All hatch doors were painted while shooting the fuse to make sure they matched up properly.

Primary painting completed

Well that's it, she's finally wearing her colors exactly one year from the day I started on the project! It looks every good as I had hoped for, and will look even better once I get all the panel line accents, weathering, decals and final assembly completed.

I'm really looking forward to getting through the weathering and clear coats so I can pull all that masking back off of the canopy and start working into the cockpit area. But, first thing's first... gotta get started on the weathering next.

Here are a few pics of how she looks know, but just wait, it's gonna look a lot better here in a couple more weeks. I have my decals on order, so hopefully I'll be able to get them soon and everything will come together nicely as I wrap things up.

That's it for now, stay tuned and happy building!