Hellcat

This is the Hobby Boss Hellcat that fell victim to the horrible misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. On my workbench during a brain fart.

I went ahead and painted it to match a photo from one of Jeff Ethell’s books.

The color is U.S. Navy Blue Gray. This is the color as I mixed it, to match the Kodachrome photographs that have been published of this color in its unfaded state. It’s bluer then some versions of this same color because I want it to be blue, and the Kodachrome film tended to jazz up colors and make them POP. So we get this effect. I’m very pleased with it. It took quite a long time to get the color to exactly what I wanted. It’s mixed from Polly Scale and Model Master Acyl paints.

I wanted the model to show off the effect of using charcoal pencils for post shading (as in this video). I’ve discovered that not all charcoal pencils are alike. I have found that the best results come from these (cheap) pencils.

The General’s cheap but good pencils.

These pencils were acquired at Michael’s and they do a very good job. The more expensive pencils that I bought later on do not work as well.

Subtle variations and some silvering.

The effect of the post shading on the single color is good. It’s easy to overdo this with an airbrush.

2 Replies to “Hellcat”

  1. Well, I still remember when everything went to hell with that one, so you used it as an early example of breaking ‘the finishing chain(tm)’

    Looks ready for action now. I am usually too lazy to do much weathering with aircraft apart from very subtle stuff. With Army equipment however…well…as the saying goes ‘tanks don’t drive over dirt, they driver through it’.

    Great model Dan.

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