Primed by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Time for some black basing. If you haven't heard the term, check YouTube under Doog's Models and watch his first video – about 8 minutes, called "Black Basing" for an introduction. (Doog in my opinion is one of the best modelers on YT - and doesn't mess around with patreon etc. All of his stuff is crackerjack.) The idea is to dispense with preshading and instead amplify tonal variations randomly. This technique is very popular among WWII and jet aircraft modelers because any service plane (or vehicle for that matter) shows a high degree of tonal variation on its surface due to paint degradation due to fading & elements and a buildup of a kind of patina from fluids combining with dirt and stains left by pilots and ground crew crawling around. The question is, does the same calculation work with fabric planes of a different era. I think it would - and would be most pronounced on doped linen surfaces. As I understand it, a rotary burnt about 1 gallon of castor oil per hour. There's a very short old film of a Morane Saulnier N starting up on YTube - the exhaust is pouring out and the prop is kicking up a cloud of dust. For some of the same effect, you can check a video on the warbird channel run by Kermit Weeks. He was starting up a full size Sopwith Snipe replica that hadn't been started for five years, flew the plane for just a few minutes - and when landed he chatted with his ground crew while standing in huge streak of castor oil that had built up in, literally, almost no time.
I can see why many people are keen on WWI aircraft modeling. We have a lot of data on the planes, and numerous artifacts from the old planes. (There's a very neat article from Vintage Aircraft about the kind of linen you'd choose for a SE-5 and how it would be sewn. It includes pieces of original fabric.) But despite the existence of thousands of pics we don't have anything like the photographic record present for WWII - which includes some in genuine color. Admiring replicas is great fun - I was at Guntersville Alabama when it still hosted dozens of mostly full sized replicas - but I don't think these planes give you much of an idea of what a real WWI service plane would have looked.
One could claim that aircraft were used hard and replaced quickly - and it's certainly true that every plane is new once. But I'd argue that few aircraft were retired from service altogether and in the early war probably very few. There was much to do, there were few enemy scouts, and not enough airplanes. Cecil Lewis flew a Morane Parasol for 300 hours (almost all in one plane) in very dangerous low level observation missions over the Somme in 1916. And check the staggering air combat scenes in Hells Angels - the allied linen covered planes look very worn indeed. But as it certainly appears to me that a WWI modeler has a lot of "creative license" to use because we simply don't know what these things would have looked like. So this Morane (barring catastrophe) is in for a full cycle of weathering: oil filters, washes, fading and soiling with pigments and a very interesting paint ideal for grim made by Iwata Com.Art.
Back to black basing. In a sense this technique turns painting the aircraft into the first stage of weathering. The black primer (which as Doog points out, makes you model look "badass" like it belongs to Darth Vader) is essential. The stage of the process is the creation of the "Mottle" coat. You mottle by creating very thing lines, dots, squiggles over every area that will be weathered. The key here is to get your airbrush in very close and "paint small." Ideally black basing should be done with acrylic/lacquer paints like Tamiya, Gunze and the very good MRP heavily thinned with lacquer thinner. (Because you don't want to cover the surface fully you use a remarkably small amount of paint.) Painting small means spraying at about 12-15 PSI as close as you can get your brush safely. I've also tried out a PE stencil made by USCHI and it works pretty well. I use a Creos Procon (made for Gunze by Iwata in Japan) with a .2 needle.
In my word, solvent paints are out. So my paints are always Golden High Flow acrylics - unless I need metallic, and then I'd use Vallejo Metal Color. For my money High Flow is the best water based acrylic out there - it has very heavy pigment load and because it's made for artists and not modelers, it costs less - about $5 for 1 ounce. Golden pioneered artist acrylics in the 1950s are make the best acrylics in the business. The only problem with High Flow is that there are no military colors, so you have to make your own. This is great fun, especially as Golden has special "mixing colors" that have remarkable effects when you mix them - see phthalo blue (green shade) or Quinacridone Red. For the base color here, the mix was simple - Titanium Buff plus a bit of Yellow Oxide. Golden uses a near 100% liquid polymer for its agent – think of it as a kind of liquid plastic. For thinning you can use water – but only in very small quantities. Too much water and the polymer begins to break apart – poor finish and bad airbrushing invariably results. Instead you use Airbrush Extender - it's a thin and white polymer. It doesn't change the color of the paint but it changes it's opacity - something essential for black basing.
Here is a Mottle Coat on the whole model and a detail. (I should note that the front end will be satin black, and hence is ignored for the present.) I should also note that I applied 1/32" (.8 mm) chart tape over the ribs and spars.
Mottle by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
MottleDet by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Next is the application of the base coat. This requires a more distant and broader coverage, so I switch to my trusty Iwata HPC Eclipse. Note, this base coat is 3-1 extender/thinner to paint. You want low opacity to make it harder to cover over the mottle coat. If you've ever demolished preshading with too much base, you know the problem. The problem is more difficult here because I want to apply enough base coat to cover some of the surface, but want to stop to remove the tape. This is trial and error here as I'm not used to the biplane idiom. The first pic is when I stopped - the second shows the plane with the tape removed.
BaseEarly by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
tapeOff by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Now, more base coat. I have found that it's a very good idea to stop spraying base before you eye tells you to. For one thing you want it to dry to see what it really looks like. And you do not want an even coat - that defeats the entire purpose. Black basing is very forgiving - if you don't have enough on, you can spray some more. If you decide that the experiment looks like a failure, spray on more and create an evenly covered surface. In this case, I'm pretty happy with where I stopped. Again, you want the surface color to modulate and to be irregular. So here's the base coat as it stands now and a detail - I think the irregular coloring is easy enough to see.
Base by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
baseDet by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
This is looking okay to me. I may tone down the dark lines on the fuselage and tail. There's a very nice Morane N replica on YouTube and you can see the thick tape over the ribs on the wings - it isn't black but it does stand out. High Flow has a satin surface and extender is gloss which is fine because decals come next. As it was I sprayed some Liquitex spray gloss varnish after the last pic. (Heaven help me if the decal for the tail fails - it would be very hard to paint it.)
Upcoming are the decals, masking the front end for a satin black (High Flow carbon black will be perfect) with some salt chipping up front. After that, serious weathering. And I suppose rigging. Wish me luck.
Eric
