Green day

All right, all right. Enough of the color-related puns in the blog header. But it was actually a day of multiple greens in the 72 Land airbrush bunker. Two of which went onto the same aircraft.

First of all, I was making some good progress on the Luftwaffe-captured P-47, so I wanted to get the upper Olive Drab topcoat on. Luckily this went on pretty smoothly, so it doesn't appear I will need to do the buff-and-repaint-with-surface-coat process that is sometimes necessary.

The other color that went into the airbrush was an Italian green for the upper surfaces of both the Italeri SM-82 and the RS Models Ambrosini SAI-207. I was using a White Ensign paint for this green. As I mentioned before, when painting the lower surface grey, having become so used to Xtracolor gloss paint, the semi-matte surface of the WEM paint was a little jarring, and I wasn't sure how the decals would react to them.

But what was more immediate was how I reacted to the plane once it had dried a bit and I saw it in the brighter light over my workbench. It was the wrong green! At least it really didn't look right to me. On further review - as they say in the NFL - I realized that the green I was using was one of the camo colours (as in green and red-brown over dark yellow) that the Italian AF used in WW2. It is considerably lighter, more yellowish, and a starker green than the olive that I was really looking for. When I bought the paint from WEM, I tried to get ahold of their entire Italian line, but many were out of stock. This was in fact the only Italian green that came in the order.

So, the quandary. Ignore it? Repaint? There are in fact some things I can pretty easily ignore, but that green wasn't one of them. So I searched my existing paints for a new colour.

I ended up using another of Xtracolour's choices: X112, which is the British version of ANA613 Olive Drab. I use their Faded Olive Drab for US WW2 aircraft that need it, so I had one available. The airbrush actually coooperated this time and the model is currently recuperating quietly. I'm not sure if you can tell the difference in the two pictures accompanying this blog entry, but I think the olive color looks considerably better in all respects. It almost looks grey in the second picture, but it is solidly olive in person. 

As you might expect, I've been keeping tabs on the Seattle - San Francisco NFC Championship game as I have been typing this. Congratulations to the Seahawks for beating the 49ers and earning their second trip to the big dance. I was really sweating with the score at 23-17 and the 49ers driving. But despite some weird calls - seemingly a requirement whenever the Hawks get into the championship realm - they came through in a big way. Good luck against Denver and GO HAWKS! NFC CHAMPS!