G4M Betty

Well i know I ought to have make another post before posting the completed pictures, but well really nothing much new could be told at that time.

i added a few flowers taken from a Model Scene box, those were glued on a small etched sprue sheet.

And then painting, painting again..

One interesting note is about how Yamamoto himself was painted.

"-If you see a white horse under a tree on a full summer day, what will be its colour?

-well white I suppose

-nonono, it will be green, only your eyes are trained to refuse the fact a horse can be green so you see it as being white, while he is in fact green"

So all the shadows on Yamamoto are a blend between green and brown..

If I had a final word about groundwork or "vegetation in modeling" it's "never again, it took me 2 months for THIS, sheesh.." 

Very big pictures in the gallery here

Okay, the good thing with being away, spending nights at the hotel near a motorway far from home in an empty damp city for several days in a row, 2 weeks in a row, and probably a bit this week too is errr.. well there is no good thing about it but then when checking at this blog from other computers and thinking a bit, I realized that there was some good things about that dio (the plants, Yamamoto) and some really bad one: the wing.

Okay, am I in a hurry to finish that one? yes to some extent but maybe the real question is "can I allow myself to get away with it" and the answer is "well no".

bad painting, too visible rivets, no light effect, really, let's correct that wing again.

A déjà vu feeling perhaps? 

Please notice that the wing is now WAY greener and lighter near the destroyed tip.



And woops, nothing happened..

The colours are a bit crushed on that one but it's looking better -i also sprayed a lighter brown with a bit of red on the ground near the tip of the wing to do some light effect. Time for more earth and dirt on the wing, some pastels, and a lot of overpainting before adding new plants!

back with my terrible blurred pictures.

So I undercoated my wings with some Mr metallic and other gunze paints. despite the horrible light, there is indeed an effect in that the center is almost silver while the edges are in a much darker shade

"It ain't easy being green", anyway, here is my green wing, the upper part is of a dark blue-green shade, the center in a more leaf-like colour

here is a part I didn't look forward too: painting the hinomaru.

So I cut a bit of paper with an X-acto cutter- compass, and fixed it with masking tape

and sprayed some red (dark red more to the top.

Well, did I mention I put smelly hairspray on the silver before applying the green and red paint? no? well now I did 

The Himomaru itself looks good, with no paint leaks.

let's put a bit of water and remove all that green on the places where the wing suffered a bit, as well as on some plates junctions. I can't miss those as my sculpting was a bit heavy to say the least..

Here is now the paint chipping done and the 2 bits on their future base

And now comes the overpainting process, wet on wet techniques with inks as well as acrylics and a lot of water. 2 hours of work on a 10cm² surface and I ain't finished yet.

Back to my seat, a French forum's member told me there was some inaccuracy in the seat, that there should be some hole for the yoke to come. That was confirmed on Hyperscale -and somebody even told me Yamamoto was reported to be on the copilot's seat at the time of the crash which would be very convenient for my diorama erm..



well let's do that hole.

First let's remove all the "accessories" that would drop at some point like the arm thing., removing the stretched plastic bit that made sort of a ledge on the seat.

Applying a small plastic sheet on that special place proved to be a bit complicated, you cans ee here on the second pic how it is after one good mastic coat.

Oh joy! Doing that ledge back again!!

phew..

Here's an in situ picture. Some invisible work here: yamamoto was sort of flmat when I sculpted him, but of course the plane's wing is curved, so I have to sculpt back some bits of the underside, reposition legs and arms so that he could really go along those curves..

Now comes the seat, I happen to have some good reference for the back and side of it so it should be walk in the park -even though I am deprived of my usual homemade photoetch facilities.

let's cut plastic

let's glue plastic

now better fill, trim, arrange the shape with a pair of scissors..

Bits of old photoetch, Archer rivets (not small enough heck!) a bit of brass to do one of the 2 seat attachs underside, some Duro cover for the seat cover and that's it, Admiral Yamamoto fits nicely in it.

Back to my wing, here it is trying to put some lead foil on some conveniently placed holes 

I deform and glue the lead foil (argh! it's impossible to find anymore), use some more Squadron putty, Mr Surfacer 500..

Here is oneof the rudders (I suppose it's the word?)

with a bit of MS that i will apply on the underside of the thing..

Anyway here is my wing after I used that trumpeter rivet thing

 Well, let's leave Yamamoto for the moment to try and work onhis surroundings. First there will be a small part of a G4M wing on thediorama complete with a bit of rudder.So of course finding a 1/35 Betty is out of the question solet's scratchbuild it.plans are put to scale, some crossections are being workedon a vector based drawing software (either Inkscape or Illustrator)  and gluedon some .7thick  plastic sheet. let's glue those pieces together using that sort of"French" Tenax you find here i need those being glued really hard because filling it withMagic Sculp is not that easy.The 2 colours are Magic Sculp, the browner is the end of anold regular MS pot that was lying around and not fit anymore for Fig sculpting,the whiter one is some sort of thing I found on ebay which is called"Morezmore Magic Sculp", I really don't like the stuff, it's ultrasticky, doesn't set so well, so I spend my pot on stuff like that.Honestly I'd wish to know why that stuff has the right to becalled "Magic Sculp" while it's not really MS.