GUEST GALLERY: IL-2 Sturmovik 1/48 by RICARDO RODRIGUEZ.

As I promised, this is one of the elaborated builds of Ricardo Rodríguez.
Ricardo used the Accurate kit as a base to perform one of his unique creations. He removed the panel lines and rivets of the wooden surfaces, engraved the rivets and lines in the metallic pieces and modified the service hatches. The metallic zones were painted with Alclad paints and the wooden surfaces were imitated with airbrush, brushes and pencils.
For those about to realism, please, make no mistake. This is not a realistic work, Ricardo´s mind is often beyond those limitations. In his own words: ...my approach was very conceptual. The model is painted in the colours of the basic materials in which each part was made. It is like a display of how surprising a mixed construction plane can be, from the perspective of engineering. There is steel, duraluminium, plywood, and fabric, but not in any way that could be actually seen in the real plane -either under construction or debris- but in a figurative way. It lacks of priming, fabric cover on the wooden surfaces or pieces that were painted before the assembly in the factories. The colours of the metallic surfaces don´t represent the real material but the thickness of the armour in each zone. I painted the interior following the ordinances, something that never happened at that time when there were common the primed pieces and bare materials.
In my own words, just the modelling I enjoy. Do you?

Q

 IL2 logo (c) by Ubisoft

The "Cat from Hell" work: Eduard 1/72.

This is how the finished thing looks. The hangar deck catapult base is made from styrene sheet, I think it is a nice display for the Hellcat. I remade the antenna wire, added the missed pitot probe and made the light blue a little brighter with diluted white oil paint to enhance the contrast with the dark blue. I think that the whole thing looks better now.

Diego Quijano.

 

This F6F-3 Hellcat is a magnificent kit from Eduard (thanks Jindra). I wanted to try some heavy weathering with this little one and no spend much time detailing so it is built straight from the box.

I only added the barrels of the machine guns made from metallic tube, the antenna wire made with stretched sprue and the landing gear wires also from stretched sprue. 

Oh, and I riveted the surface with the spur riveter, as usual.

The dark blue is painted with several transparent layers of much diluted paint, that was an idea I had after a conversation with Mark Smith about dark schemes (thanks Mark).

The degraded paint effects are mainly airbrushed, is amazing the fine effects that you can get with Tamiya paints diluted with lacquer thinner and a 0.2mm nozzle.

The undersurface is entirely painted with airbrush. As usual, this zone is hard to appreciate, so I exaggerated the weathering to get a noticeable effect.

The dirt effects on the upper surface are made with enamel products (AK, pigments, and so).

The new antenna wire made from thinner stretched sprue works better than the old.

The hangar deck base. The pipes under the deck floor are entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to the real thing is purely coincidental. It is just a way to decorate that zone.

A picture just to make the size comparison...