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Academy’s 1/48 Spitfire Mk. XIVc: Six Shades of Gray, and Three Shades of Green

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After priming the Mk. XIV, I got the paint on. All of the paints I used were of the Tamiya variety. The primary colors were the “Spitfire Trio”- XF-81,82, and 83.

I started by painting the undersides XF-83, and then using highly diluted white paint, fading various areas. I added some XF-69 to the XF-81 in order to do the post-shading along the panel lines. A coat of Future was airbrushed to the underside, and it was masked off.

Next I painted the upper surfaces XF-82. Many times I’ve tried to paint just the areas of the airframe that will be gray, but inevitably I end up missing a spot that needs to be painted, or worse, I make a mistake in masking, and when all is said and done, I have a spot of bare plastic staring at me. So to avoid that, I paint the entire upper surface. I then did some fading with white, and post-shading with a very dark gray. A coat of Future was added to protect the paint from masking.

More masking was added, and the remaining areas were painted with XF-81, and the shading/fading was done with yellow and a very dark green.

Once it was unmasked, I was pretty happy with the results. I am really liking how much better the shading/fading look with tints and shades of the base paint, rather than a generic overspray over the complete camo job as I’ve done in the past. (Although I will probably try that over this to see how it ends up.)

Next up will be some final paint steps, and then decals.

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