Finished the Lend-lease Russian P-40B in winter camouflage!
Now, I must say, that the P-40B is a royal pain in the prettythang for skinners!!!
I found out how some of the recent skins made by Nate or Supe boasted such hih quality in markings: they used bits and pieces of unused space in the BMP files, and put markings in enlarged sizes there.
Now, this, is a very good attempt IMO, for making one plane scheme look pretty
, however, when others try to alter it, it becomes very very difficult because it is like putting pieces of puzzles together, and accounting for difference in tones of color in the 'marking area' and the 'fuselage area', when a certain scheme doesn't use particular markings, is simply a head banger.
For instance, the "shark mouth" and "eye" parts had to be done separately in white winter camo.. and since the differences in tone show more drastically when in white color, it took a considerable long time to make it look natural!
..
But alas, I've finished it. The P-40B skin has some quirks, like multiple parts depending on a single area.. this problem shows in the left cowling part where there's a long brown "patch" near the guns.. but thankfully, I think it's no biggy.
I thought of two ways to do winter skinning. In reality, winter camouflage was nothing but coat of white, water-soluable paint applied on some parts.. and this paint weathers out pretty easily.
So, the first option was make the panel lines, and do the 'background' painting by scratch.. second option was to do the panel lines, leave the background as it is, and apply a separate coat of white to act as white paint and erase it out in parts. In this instance I took the first option, just for the experience.. (which I admit, was a big headache..!).
I tried especially hard, to make some parts look 'weathered' out, where the white coat wears off, and show brown original paint underneath. How good it turned out, is up for you guys to judge
