By Nathan Miller
The 'out of the box' paint scheme.
Blackfeather Vega
Well It's time to re-paint my Lockheed Vega for my "Blackfeather" Pulp serial game. The paintjob will be red and it will have a stylized black crow with outstretched wings on the top. Hopefully it will turn out as nice as my truck. This model isn't very accurate but I'll try to make it look as nice as I can.
Here is a picture of the model stripped of it's paint. I used a citrus based stripper brushed on. The plastic wheels took a bit of damage but not much. I removed the plastic window and engine to strip the paint.
Ok well a stripped plane isn't that interesting I know but it did take some time to strip it and prime it so that's about all I got done on the first night. No need to show the primed plane either since it was just primer grey.
Here is the Vega painted red. I chose to hand paint the plane red using about 4 or so thin coats. I like the slight variation of the hand painted surface over a smoother spray painted surface. Vegas were made of plywood and the fact that this plane is diecast already makes it look a bit smoother and more uniform than it should. Also the pics I've seen of older planes make a lot of them look hand painted.
The next task was to go ahead and tackle the main decorative feature of this plane. I wanted to have a stylized crow with it wings spread out over the top of the plane and wings. I made a basic half template to trace around.
After tracing around the left side I flipped my template over and traced the right side.
Then I drew in the beak and feather tuft on the head.
then I painted it in with black. I still have some touch up to do here. I'm also going to add some highlights before I'm done to bring out the crow more but I'll wait to do that after I finish laying in some more detail and give the model a light wash.
Most of the basic decoration is blocked in here in black. The black designs on the spats, tail, and nose will be outlined in yellow, also the windows will be painted in as well.
I finished the yellow outlines and painted in all the windows. Here are shots from two angles.
I still have to put the identification numbers on the underside of the wing and add a few more details to the body of the plane then finish the engine and prop and the canopy. Here's the Vega with a 28mm figure for scale.
I drybrushed the engine then painted the propeller and nose cone.
After that I only had one major detail left other than the wheels which I'm painting at the very end because of their tendency to get stuff on them.
I did a bit of research on registration numbers then promptly forgot the information. I think it should read NC-2875 but for some reason or the other I forgot that when I got started and just used N-2875. It's not really enough of an error to go back and fix as far as I'm concerned. I basically did a carbon transfer from a print out of the numbers.
I made my own transfer by using a stick of willow charcoal to cover the back of the printout with black carbon. You can use pencil but charcoal won't bleed through the paint like graphite will.
It's hard to see the transfer in these photos but it came out very clear. To make the transfer you just tape the paper down lightly and trace the image you want to transfer.
After I made the transfer I just painted in the letters.
Now I'm down to weathering and paint detailing. I'm not really sure how to go about it. A few months ago I did the truck pictured here using almost exactly the same methods that I have with this plane but the truck has a low more surface detail whereas the plane has large smooth surfaces.
I went ahead and did a light wash which did help enhance the details but it also just looks a bit muddled in some places. Then again I want the plane to look in use but well maintained so a bit a gunk is ok. I'm at the point now where I need decide about highlighting and other weathering techniques but I'm not entirely sure where to start.
Here's Amelia Earhart next to her Vega. Even accounting for her height you can see how tall my Vega is compared to the real thing. Also the windows and doors are somewhat larger on the model. Still I think it's a pretty nice match for game use. I chickened out on doing much weathering. I mostly focused on the windows and the door. The propeller turned out pretty good.
