Enemy incoming - A Blood Red Skies Project

Although there will be a twist in how I approach painting the squadrons to start off with things will be fairly conventional.

For all Luftwaffe units, the Me109s and later the FW190s, it will be vaguely along the lines of mid-war Jagdgeschwader 26 as this is one of the main fighter units in the west, but elements served in most theatres. I slightly prefer the mid-war paint scheme made up of the trinity RLM 74, 75 & 76, i.e. a light grey blue, grey green and a grey violet to the early war scheme and the more muted approach to yellow.

For my historical paints these days I tend exclusively use Mig Ammo paints as the colours are good, they can be airbrushed and painted, and having learnt how to airbrush them I generally feel comfortable using them. As it happened the store I usually get my supplies from was out of the Mig Ammo sets I needed so I had to go for alternatives.

As I am not sure yet if I will airbrush or hand paint the aircraft I needed a paint that works for both methods. This rules out the Vallejo air range as in my experience the paints are quite temperamental when it comes to brush painting.

AK Interactive had a box set so I took that. The colours are fine, but for whatever reason the airbrush application was tricky on this small scale and unlike Mig Ammo paints brush application isn’t great. So I will be reverting back to what I know as soon as possible. The paints aren’t wasted though as I am toying with the idea of using the same colours for an Adeptus Titanicus force.

For the Spitfires it will be the standard Temperate Land Scheme brown and green everyone is familiar with for 1940. I prefer the later grey-green scheme and that will be what I use later variants of Spitfires when they come.

Again I couldn’t get what I needed for the Sky Type S so I took a bottle of Hakata Sky Type S. Never used Hakata paints, but they make a very interesting range of realistic colours so I have wanted to try them out for a while. The paints come in different ranges – brush, airbrush and lacquer –  and the single bottle paints are supposed to be both air and brush applicable. I can’t fault the colour great, but it needs considerable thinning to be airbrushable and even then its very temperamental so its very hard to use even if there is nothing difficult about spraying the flat underside. So back to Mig Ammo as soon as I can get the colours  I need again.

So there will be a little delay as I wait for the missing paints. A gratuitous shot of progress this far.