P-51C Mustang Engine - Painting

So now painting begins on the engine and I had to take a few lessons from the late Bob Ross on this one. Now I have painted several models, I know airbrushing pretty well, but it still amazes me how much you can learn even if you have mastered something. For instance: I had all my engine components glued on toothpicks and had bought a bottle of Model Master Semi-gloss black and was ready to start airbrushing. I went to mix the paint with my airbrush thinner and it wouldn't mix. It was like oil and water. I looked at the paint bottle and realized I had bought acrylic paint, not enamel. At first I was quite annoyed that I had no way to airbrush acrylic paints, but then I grabbed a brush and painted a little piece of scrap plastic just to see how it came out. I was pleasently surprised that this acrylic paint left no brush marks on the plastic. Lightbulb! So I test painted one of my components and sure enough, it looks like it was airbrushed. No brush marks. So as Bob Ross would say, we don't have mistakes, we have happy accidents. There is however a method to be followed when painting anything.

In order to prevent brush marks, the paint in the brush has to be kept wet. If you have ever painted a large area before, you may have noticed that when you first start brushing the paint goes on nice and smooth. But as you continue streaks start to appear and the bristles become stiff. This is because the paint in the bristles is starting to dry and it sticks the bristles together. This is what forms the brush marks. You need to continually clean the brush while you paint. I keep a jar of lacquer thinner on my paint carousel and every couple of minutes I clean off the brush, dry it, and reshake my paint. Taking the extra minute to do this can really make a difference in the paint job.

Since fully black painted parts don't really look that good in pictures, I didn't take any of the painting process. I think you know what painted parts look like. So onto the detailing. On most Merlin engines that I have seen the engine is painted black, but the nuts and bolts are a natural metal color. So on my model the nuts and bolts have to be painted aluminum. Luckily the model is detailed enough to have a few hundred fasteners molded onto it, but painting tiny little things like this without messing up the paint around it is the real challenge. Again, I took a lesson from Bob Ross. Time to pull out the knife. I found that the best way to paint these fasteners was by dipping the tip of my X-acto knife in the paint and lightly touching it to the part. Now the idea behind this is not have big aluminum blobs, its to create subtle glistens. Its a detail that really won't be obvious, except to the trained detail-oriented eye. Others will see it after I point it out, I'm sure. But if you look at the pictures below, you'll see that these tiny little details can really make the engine look good and are well worth the time.