A Re-Review - Vallejo Model Air

A while ago I wrote a review of Vallejo's Model Air range of paints. I stand by my comments that they work really well and from a technical point of view they are still the best paints I've used with an airbrush. However a few months on and I feel I really need to add something to that review, a disclaimer if you like.

Disclaimer:

While the paints are excellent the colours are not. If you buy one of their themed colour sets expecting to be able to use them straight out of the box then you are likely to be disappointed. Simply put, the colours are not even close to what they claim to be.

RLM colours? Not even close.

So far I've investigated both their RLM and RAF colours and found them both to be some way of what they are meant to be. Greens in particular seem to be nowhere near the shades they should be. Want an RAF green? You'll probably need to use their Russian green. Luftwaffe greens? I've no idea where they've got the colours from. Light blue undersides for your Luftwaffe aircraft? You'll probably need to mix in more grey into the supposed blue than blue, and so on.

You can probably see where this is going, when I refer to my Academy 1:72 Me 163B build and as to why there's been little in the way of progress. Yes you guessed it, I sprayed it in RLM 81 and 82 straight out of the bottle and now it looks like something from a cartoon. The undersides are fine so now I've got to find a way of removing the topside colours without ruining the rest of the paintwork or the interior.

It's times like this when I find this hobby less than enjoyable. The kit is excellent, for once my skills haven't let me down, just frustrating paint shades from Vallejo...

What's On The Workbench? #4

As you might have guessed by now, my "What's On The Workbench" posts are mostly filler posts when not much progress has been made on my current projects.

So what's on the workbench?

To start with, Academy's Me 163B is now assembled and has been base coated in Vallejo Model Air's silver. I had a bit of trouble with the horizontal join around the nose, which took a couple of attempts to fill to a point where I was happy with it, but it's now there.

Why a silver base coat? Well I intend to try the hairspray technique of weathering so I want the silver to show through the paint scheme. I believe the wings of the Me 163 were wooden but I decided to keep a uniform base colour so when I add further layers they too stay uniform in colour.

However I'm not going to try a previously untried technique on this model so I've quickly mocked up an old scrap kit, in this case an Airfix Spitfire, with a two colour camouflage scheme to practice on.

Again I used a silver base coat followed by a coat of Tamiya semi-gloss clear from a spray can. Once this had dried I airbrushed hairspray over the whole model, let it dry, before over spraying the camouflage scheme.

So now I just need this to dry before applying warm water and attempting to rub off some of the paint. If it works, then I intend to repeat the process on the Me 163.