Painting some blue (Lightning, Hawk)

I am trying to keep painting momentum going, so today I went down and did a short paint session. Luckily I had two models that needed the same color (a dark blue, for which I am using Xtracolour Oxford Blue).

These consisted of a Bae Hawk T2 (one of British Aerospace’s demo aircraft) and a special scheme Bae Lightning F2 (just the spine and fin). Any of the blues seem to have a special set of challenges when it comes to painting. I’m not sure if the pigment is ground differently or what, but it seems that whenever I shoot blue it seems to turn out a bit grainy. Not to worry; there is a technique to handle that. Shoot the color coat first, making sure coverage is good. Then, once the paint has cured, buff it down with a low-grit sandpaper. This should take away the raised area in the paint. Then, after cleaning off any dust, shoot a very diluted coat of the same color. Since this is a second coat, you don’t have to worry much about coverage, and the thinned nature of the paint will allow it to fill in the little valleys and self-level the paint.

I won’t be able to do this for a couple of days, because I need to allow the paint to cure, but I have some construction work that can be done to fill in the available bench time this week.