I have not done much building in the past 3 months. Work got in the way. Sigh shame we have to work lol. I have been doing some playing with rigging and water colour pencils over the past few days though
Back when I was building in 1/72 I used heat stretched sprue or wire. But that was 15 years ago and things have changed so wanted to try new methods. Here is a mule from the never to be finished shelf. On the underside of the wing I used Uschi Extra fine (I probably should have used fine)
I found this neat looking and realistic, but at least up here in Canada hard to use because of static. Threading through loops I couldn't get it to work until I decided to glue the end of the thread to a thin strand of wire. At which point it was easy and once done looks so fine and in scale. Perhaps extra fine was better lol sorry on the image as the thread is barely visible, but thats the effect i wanted.
Next is Easy Line. Much easier to work with, but I think that is more the fact its thicker, this was "Fine"
Just pull over a connection point and a touch of superglue and your done. It really is easy, but a bit thick in this scale imho (1/48)
For the upper wing I didnt really try to loop through rigging points, just playing to figure out how to use.
Last image is WaterColour pencils on a scrap wing. Well not scrap actually, but was primed and this doesn't hurt it. Although in retrospect I needed it more matt as the effect would have worked better.
Back in the day I used chalk pastels and prisma colour pencils for all sorts of effects from chipping to turned aluminum and weathering. In my mind way easier to control and if you dont like the effect its not permanent, but I never used water colour pencils. So this was my first experiment, I'm looking for an easy way to simulate wood that doesn't look over powering or mar detail. Was the reason to try this.
I used an old pointy brush (#1 ) and wet it in plain old water, then just brushed over the pencil tip to pick up the colour. After that I just painted. The effect I think is very nice and it doesn't obscure detail or take weeks to dry. If I airbrushed tamiya clear yellow or orange over it I think it would look quite subtly realistic. I have to practice a lot more but this is an easy way to simulate wood.... imho. I used my wifes pencils and this was her suggestion. They are Staedtler and Derwent in ochre's, Vandyke Brown and umbers.
Oh and I should add no Nieuport lower wing was harmed in this. I washed the colour off and the wing is all set for when I get back to the Nieuport 11
Ray
