How to custom paint the Fokker Dr.1

[brdavis]

Hello,

In this thread I'm going to be showing some pictures and the steps I take to re-paint the Fokker Dr.1. I don't claim to be an experienced modeler or painter, having only acquired an airbrush for Christmas in 2014 and completing my first re-paint a few months later in 2015. I've built a few of the Valom kits in the last year and a half, but they are the first models I've done in roughly 25 years. As such you'll see some mistakes and errors, things an experienced modeler/painter would do differently or better. Those of you with tips and tricks, please chime in. My hope is that this will be encouraging to anyone who has been sitting on the fence about giving re-painting a try themselves. With some planning and patience, even a in-experienced modeler like me can turn out some decent looking models.

[brdavis]

First up is a fairly easy one, August Raben's Dr.1 from Jasta 18. I've seen various renditions of this aircraft with both a red cowling and a white cowling. I didn't do a lot of research to determine which is correct, I just chose to do a white cowling to make it stand out a little more from other red tri-planes in the game. I also read somewhere after starting on this endeavor that the undersides should be red and white, not blue as I have done here. Oh well, here goes:

Starting with a standard Wings of Glory MVR model, the first thing I do is give it a good coat of Tamiya primer. A couple of coats of this does a good job of covering up the factory red and gives a good base to start painting from.




Next session, I use Vallejo White paint and paint up the cowling with my airbrush:



After the white paint has dried, I use silly putty to mask the cowling and propeller. I use a hobby knife to shape the putty and try to get a sharp line right at the edge of the cowling. I get it as good as I can here so that touch-up is minimal around the cowling later. I then paint the wheels black. I started doing the wheels like this so that I could get the nice smooth airbrush finish on the tires, as I'm not very good at getting a very smooth result when I hand-paint them.




After the black has dried, I use silly putty again to mask the wheels. Then I load up some blue-ish paint in the airbrush and paint the undersides of the plane. I've found that for this purpose I like to use a mix of Vallejo 'Pale Grey Blue' and 'Deep Sky Blue' in a 5:1 ratio. I mix up some extra and store it in a spare paint jar to use later when touching up.




At this point I'm using some masking tape to cover up the blue undersides. The yellow tape you see is Tamiya 6mm masking tape and the green is just some regular painter's FrogTape. I paint the undersides first and then mask them because I think its easier to just cover the single flat surface on the undersides of the wings. Later when I paint the color for the wing tops, the wing edges will be exposed and get the same color as the top of the wings. I also carefully cover up the bottom of the fuselage and trim the tape with a hobby knife. I trim the other tape close to the wing edges and add a little bit of putty over the wheels to keep them covered up. I also use silly putty on the bottom of the fuselage underneath the undercarriage because its easy to mold with a hobby knife.

Masking with tape like this is probably the single most time-consuming step in the process.




Next up is to give the subject a coat of Vallejo 'Flat Red' with the airbrush.



Once the red paint is dry, I start masking again. Here you see the Tamiya tape marking off the tail of the plane, which will be painted white. I like the Tamiya tape here because its easy to form around the fuselage and makes it easy to tell when you've got a nice seal that will prevent paint from seeping up under the edge of the tape.



After that edge is defined and the tape sealed nicely, I use the green tape to mask off the rest of the plane. The grey stuff you see is used silly putty, it does a nice job of sealing up the little gaps that are difficult to cover with tape. I then spray the tail with Vallejo White.




Next up is one of my favorite parts of the process, removing the masking tape. I carefully remove all the masking tape from the model and get the first glimpse of what the model is eventually going to look like.





In the above pictures you can see several places that need to be touched up, including the cowling right at the edge, the wing struts and undercarriage, the bottom peg, some spots on the undersurface where paint might have crept under the tape a little bit, etc. I do that now, along with brush-painting the little details such as the machine guns, pilot, propeller, wing skids, tail skid, engine cylinders, etc. On the wheel covers I get my brush and dip the rounded handle end of the brush in my paint, then touch that to the wheels to get a nice, fairly round wheel cover.

I used Vallejo Silver for the machine guns and cylinders on this model, but sometimes I use Vallejo Grey Gunmetal for a darker look. The brown I used is actually Testors Flat Dark Tan, just because I don't have a good wood-color brown in Vallejo right now.

After the touch up and details, it looks like this:






Now I give it a few good coats of Pledge floor polish in preparation for the decals. Applying the decals is my other favorite part of the process. These decals are from the AviationWings.com Fokker Dr.1 Part 2 set. I use Microsol and Microset on the decals. The microsol is brushed on before and after the decal is placed to help the decal adhere to the model. The microset sort of 'melts' the decal and makes it fit all the surface texture of the model and gives it that 'painted on' look. After the decals have had time to dry, I give it another couple of coats of the Pledge, then a couple coats of Vallejo Satin Varnish. I like to leave them with a slight shine sort of like the Ares models have - not too shiny and not too dull.





That's all for this one, the above steps were done over about 8 different sessions.

That's all for tonight, come back soon for parts 2 & 3.

[brdavis]

Next, Eberhardt Mohnike - one of the pilots in the Red Baron's Jasta 11.

A lot of the steps are going to be the same as in Raben's Dr.1, but this one adds some painted streaks on the wings and fuselage.

I start again with a standard MVR triplane, but this time I putty the cowling and wheels before painting. I want to keep the factory red there to reduce work later as well as match my other Jasta 11 planes. Note that I also covered the rudder in putty. I figured I would keep the white rudder and decal there also (only to change my mind later). After puttying, I use the grey primer.





After the primer has dried, I paint the undersides in my special blue mix, and when that is dry I'm back to masking.





At this point I'm ready to paint the base color. I like to use Vallejo Khaki.




Next I want to paint the streaks on the wings and fuselage. I use one of these fan-shaped brushes that I picked up from Hobby Lobby. I use a piece of paper to practice painting the thin lines. I'm getting just a tiny amount of paint in the ends of the bristles, trying to avoid allowing the bristles to stick together with too much paint. On my paper I'm experimenting with various Vallejo and Testors greens and browns.




After some practice on the paper, I put the brush to the model.




Now I'm again using the tamiya tape to mark off the tail for painting. I again use the tape to get a nice clean edge on the fuselage, then use the green tape and putty to cover up the rest of the plane.




I use Vallejo 'Deep Sky Blue' for the tail:




Removing the masking tape reveals all the places where touch up is needed. Most notably the undercarriage, and around the rudder and cowling.





At this point in the process I changed my mind about decals and decided I want to use the later straight-armed balkenkreuz style of decals rather than the curved iron cross style. I carefully scraped the factory decal off the rudder and then brush-painted white to touch up. After touching up, I hand paint the details - struts, machine guns, wings skids, pilot, etc, as before. The cowling, engine cylinders, propeller and wheels keep their factory finish.





After a couple of coats of Pledge I started applying decals. For the serial number, I carefully cut a single decal in half and position the parts on either side of the fuselage, right up against the blue tail so that it appears like the blue has been painted over the serial number. Originally I was not going to put a green background under the upper wing crosses, but then decided to after I had already coated with pledge and started applying decals. So I added a couple of unneccesary steps for myself by deciding late to add these green backgrounds. I carefully measure the size of my decals and mark off a couple of squares on the top wing with the masking tape. I use a mix of Vallejo 'Intermediate Green' and Khaki for the color, which I paint by hand.




I remove the masking tape, spray a coat or two of Pledge over the green squares, and then apply the decals to the upper wing. I again use decals from the AviationWings sets. A final topcoat of Pledge, then the satin varnish to finish it up.





Thanks for the read - stay tuned for part 3, which will be another Jasta 11 pilot, Werner Steinhauser.

[brdavis]

For part 3 we have Werner Steinhauser, another pilot of Jasta 11.

The first steps of this one are identical to the previous example. I again used a Ares Manfred von Richtofen model, masked off the cowling, wheels and rudder before spraying a primer coat, then blue underneath, khaki on top, and then streaks on the wings and fuselage. Once the base colors and streaks have been painted, I cut two strips of Tamiya masking tape and wrapped it around the fuselage to mark where the yellow band will be.



Once that was done, I used tape to cover the back end of the fuselage behind the band, and covered up the wings and everything else. I am again using silly putty to fill in the gaps and areas that are difficult to tape. Only the top of the tail plane will be yellow, along with the fuselage band.





I airbrush yellow over the tail end of the plane. After it dried I sprayed a coat of the pledge, and then started trying to use masking tape to mark off the red lines on the tailplane. Before very long I decided against trying to painting the lines and decided to print some decals to use instead.




I remove all the masking tape and putty, and do some touch up work around the edges, around the rudder, cowling, and peg. I also painted the struts red, and painted the pilot, the machine guns, and wing skids. I scraped off the iron cross decal on the rudder (at first I was going to use that type of decal, but later opted to use the balkenkreuz style instead. After scraping the decal off I touched up the rudder with white.





Next, I spent some time experimenting with decals. I created red lines in a graphics editor and tried different line widths as well as spacing. When I figured out something that I thought would work well, I printed it on Testors clear decal paper. After letting the red ink set over night, I sprayed Krylon Clear over the decal paper to seal the red ink.



From the decal paper I cut some triangle shaped pieces and began placing them on the tail plane. Using the clear decal paper, this turned out pretty well. I was glad I went this route rather than trying to mask and paint these lines. I let the decal curl over the front edge of the tail plane and then trimmed it with a hobby knife. The right side decal went on great the first time, but it took me 4-5 attempts to get the left side done. The decal would curl the wrong way or stretch too much, or the ink would run after messing with the decal too much.

After the tail plane was done, I carefully cut some pieces of the red lines out and create the red 'X' over the yellow fuselage band.




At this point I taped off two squares on the top wing and painted them green. I don't have a photo of this step but its exactly the same as I did for the Mohnicke model in example 2 above.

After painting the green squares, I gave the whole thing a few coats of pledge, applied the other decals on the upper wing, under the lower wing, and on the rudder. I coated with pledge again to seal the decals, and later finally gave it a few coats of the satin varnish to finish it off.

[BobP]

No experience? Give yourself a big credit. That is a great paint job and a good step by step how to.

[matt56]

Lovely work here, Brian! Too much masking and airbrushing for my tastes - I would rather brush-paint the beasty - but your results are indeed lovely!

And the how-to is perfect for others wanting to follow in your footsteps themselves.

All the best,
Matt

[Teaticket]

Super job Brian. I have had an airbrush for years but have not learned how to use it yet. A very helpful visual 'How-To'.

[Dan-Sam]

Wonderful how clean a repainted mini can be Awesome

[gully_raker]

Nice tutorial Brian!

I just painted my Rabin by hand. The J18 colour scheme is really great on the games table.

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[Marechallannes]

A lot of work for such a tiny plane.

[Ken at Sunrise]

If I only had the ability and patience to do something like that. Alas I don't, which is why I am forced (oh twist my arm) to getting the pre-painted models.

[Flying Helmut]

Super job Brian. I have had an airbrush for years but have not learned how to use it yet. A very helpful visual 'How-To'.

Same here!

Great job on the how-to.

You have got the paint scheme spot on (as far as my research went for my two Raben tripes) - white cowling and blue undersides.

[brdavis]

Thanks for the feedback guys - all the taping is a lot of work. I enjoy the process though and prefer the airbrushed look to my poor hand-painting ability

Part 2 is posted now.

[brdavis]

If I only had the ability and patience to do something like that. Alas I don't, which is why I am forced (oh twist my arm) to getting the pre-painted models.

Yes, I admit that after all this time and effort, the small price to pay for a quality pre-painted mini is really a fabulous deal!

[Ken at Sunrise]

Yes, I admit that after all this time and effort, the small price to pay for a quality pre-painted mini is really a fabulous deal!

Time and effort yes, but in my case ability as well. I recently glued a small gun back on. Seemed simple enough, a small gun, fixed in place. I got my magnifying glass just in case, a toothpick, some glue and I was ready. Now it seems I have bright and shiny upper wing where all of the extra glue went that I didn't need, or want. Some have the abilities and skills, others like me marvel and hope we can find one or two customs (right now just some already released planes would be nice too) at a reasonable price.

Oh well....

[BobP]

Brian thanks for the idea on how to make the streaks like you did. I have to go get a brush like that.

[Flying Helmut]

I have to go get a brush like that.

I have a couple - old brushes that I failed to clean properly as a teenager!

Now old, craggy and sparse of hairs (the brushes, that is, not me!!!) and very useful for streaks.

[Mike George]

Nice work wish my hands wouldn't shack so much so I could paint like you do.

[brdavis]

I finally got part 3 posted - Werner Steinhauser. I debated for a long time on whether to attempt this one, but decided to go for it. Making decals for the red stripes turned out a lot better than trying to paint them would have, I think.

[fast.git]

Old thread... new praise. Beautiful work, and a great how-to! Thanks for sharing!