I mixed together Raw Umber and Ivory
Black artists’ oil colours together with a
generous amount of Xtracolor thinners.I airbrushed the mixture starting from the
wing undersides and working within a small
area at a time.By gently wiping out the freshly dried oils I left just as much as
needed to create the effects caused by oil stains and fuel leaks, as
well as to show the scribed details and riveting.
The washes finished and I proceeded with the
masking and painting of the de-icer boots.
The decals were applied next. I designed and
printed the decals at my printer, on an A4 sheet of
Bare-Metal’s Clear Decal film for ink-jet printers.
One of the most tedious operations was the
application of the striped red section of the
walkways. No less than 180cm (!) of striped red
lines were applied on the model, in itself a very
time-consuming operation.All other decals such as aircraft servicing point
symbols and numerous stencils were finally applied
presenting no problems whatsoever. As I finished
with decal application, I gave the entire model a
light coating of Xtracolor XDFF flat varnish. This
sealed all decals and gave the model a uniform
appearance.SOME LAST DETAILS
As the construction of the Noratlas model was
reaching completion, there were a lot of minor
details put into the build which, if described in
detail, would really need an article of their own.
Some of these details were built during the spare
time between the major assemblies; some were
modelled along the construction and not in a single
step, the transparencies described earlier being a
good example. I selected a few, described below,
which I considered to be important to a more
complete presentation of the build.