Krusty said:EDIT: Bullethead, my comment was about the other blue spit. Seeing your progress I like it too, but I think it needs a bit more blue on the inboard wings. Worn blue, but more blue 
Well, seeing that the blue seems to have come off in big chunks fairly soon after arrival, (kinda like Kev had originally, before the latest pics) I figured anywhere that got a lot of traffic would have lost almost all the blue after 6 or 7 months of daily use. Then the desert would have gotten a lot of wear. I also have the blue peeled back from the leading edges, too. Because the inner wings have all the traffic for the engine and gun bays, I don't have much blue there.
Have you considered trying to depict the blue "stuck" in the panel lines (not wearing off as badly) or something along those lines?
IMHO, this would be totally unrealistic. See my numerous rants about panel lines
. For ANY paint to be inside a panel line, there would have to be zero sealant in the tiny gap between the edges of the panels at the time the paint was applied. I seriously doubt this would be the case on any plane (except maybe mid-war Russians and late-war Germans), especially not on factory-fresh spits like these were at the time they turned blue.
In fact, on the contrary, panel and rivet lines lose their paint the fastest on upper wings. This is because these lines show where the underlying structure is, the spaces between these lines being unsupported sheet metal. Therefore, personnel try hard to walk only on panel and rivet lines to keep from pushing in the skin. But when they don't, and the skin gets pushed in, that makes the structure lines stick up higher and therefore take even more wear.
Here's how it looks now. I've only really gotten the wings into final shape (except for gunsmoke). Been doing a lot of driving lately so haven't had that much time to work on this:
