1/72 Eastern Express Morane-Saulnier 'I'

[Bolman]

Hello again,

A shot of a group of Morane-Saulnier I I completed for game play as well. As before, color is an easy way to tell your game piece from another one on the table. Hence the schemes presented here.
The issue I had with this kit was, it only came with markings for a Russian squadron and I wanted French planes. I ended up hand painting the markings for all three planes. Also, all of my models are hand painted with brushes. I haven't used an air brush since my railroad modeling days.



Thanks for looking,

John

[IFF1418]

Hello John,

Extremely well done in this scale. And your painted markings are teriffic. Well done!

Kind regards
Patrick

[Epeeman]

John,

Agree with Patrick - well painted models that look great.

Regards

Dave

[lcarroll]

Very pretty little guys and hard to believe they are brush painted. You really did spectacular work on those markings, well done!
Cheers,
Lance

[coyotemagic]

Excellent work on all three, John.  Lovely trio.
Cheers,
Bud

[lone modeller]

Very good models indeed. I too hand paint roundels these days as I usually find that I do not have suitable transfers. Yours are really very good indeed.

[vincentm]

A bunch of lovely birds. Very sharp and slender rigging. Could you post more pics?

[IanB]

Very nice, John.
I managed to find an older kit on e-bay of the French version, but those roundals are very nicely done!

Ian

[Bolman]

Thank you all for your kind remarks.

A bunch of lovely birds. Very sharp and slender rigging. Could you post more pics?

A few more...







John

[Des]

All beautifully done John, very well painted and the rigging looks excellent.

Des.

[Bolman]

All beautifully done John, very well painted and the rigging looks excellent.

Des.

Thanks Des. Means a lot.

John

[vincentm]

Really nice little birds, I guess there not much more than 2 inches long...I particylarly like the "creamy" one with a wooden fuselage. It may be due to the lighting or camera, but it looks like the blue on roundels is a bit too dark. French roundels have a rather light blue, even more at this time. Here's a shot of an Almark decal sheet which shows what I mean:

[Bolman]

Vincent,

Thank you for your compliments. Although the craft appears small, they are actually about 4 and a half inches for the wing span, and just over 3 inches in length. Not huge by any standard, unless you're modelling in 1/144th!

Regarding the shade of blue, I have seen it as light as you've offered in your example, and yet I have also seen it as dark as in my usage. The following is a picture of a portion of the artwork on the inside cover of the Windsock Datafile for the Voison:



Since the actual painting of those planes, I have aquired numerous amounts of extra decal sheets from various manufacturers and find there is quite a variance in the offerings of the decals as well in regards to the shade of blue used.

In the case of the above pictured craft, all are fictional and are un-numbered or serialed and do not represent any one particular craft that once existed. They are intended to be generic and represent the type of craft for use as game pieces.

Thanks for your interest! I'm always trying to find details I can add to my models that won't suffer constant handling and don't add too many extra hours to my build times. I do need to expand my color palette and hope to find a shade of blue that will closely match what you have in your example. Perhaps for when I scratch build my 6 Morane-Saulnier 'L's.

John

[vincentm]

there is quite a variance in the offerings of the decals as well in regards to the shade of blue used.

You're right, and it's the same with the sheets in model boxes as well.
The pic below is almost the closest match I could find to french roundel colors from before WWII. The red is rather bright, and the blue has a very light shade of green:

But on the Almark sheet, they may have tried to figure the fading of colors on used fabric, so I'm not totally sure if the colors are right for WWI french planes.