I am building Academy’s PV-1 Naval Patrol plane from middle WWII. I have Tamiya flat white which I hope to use for the underside “insignia white”, and then use the panel line accent from Tamiya. I have both brown and black accent colors, but I’ve not used them on an airplane before. Should I paint the lines with a brush and then clean up the overage or should I wash it on all over and wipe off excess with a cloth or q tip? I’ve not done this before. On the top I have Testors oil based enamel for the “navy blue” and the “intermediate blue”, and so cannot use the oil based panel liner, so what should I do? Should I just undercoat the whole plane with black and then paint the camo or just undercoat the panel lines with black and then the camo. The kit is quite nice and well engineered so I would like to do it justice. Appreciate any advice on how to proceed. thanks.
If anything you should at least put a protective coat over the base paint to protect it from your weathering attempts, same as you would other types of kits. I haven’t used enamels in a while as I’ve totally switched over to Tamiya and AK Real Colors for most of my work now but much of my weathering stuff are still enamels. That said, a coat of gloss or satin over your blues and white, then you can touch the panel liner and let it wick into the lines and details and then come back in a bit with the Q-tip or cloth as planned. I have actually applied acrylic washes over an aircraft and then wiped the excess off to simulate dirty, dusty craft but obviously that has the risk of breaking off the fiddly bits. The benefit of acrylics is they are water-based mostly and not likely to wreck the paint underneath.
I too mostly use acrylics. No one in town has hobby paints anymore. Some leftovers are years old at this point and so I’d have to mail order or drive 200 miles to a store that may have some. So that’s why I thought of trying to use the enamels that I do have. Thanks for your help. Like the idea of using a protective coating. May be my best option.
I would absolutely gloss or satin coat it in something acrylic. Then wash the liner inyo the panel lines. No need to be near. Once it sets a bit wipe off with a thinner DAMP not wet cotton ball or qtip
Thanks for your advice. I like it and I have some Liquitex acrylic gloss that I use before decals.