How to Freehand Camo with an Airbrush on the Ma.K Luna Camel

Hi folks, let me share with you how I’ve painted up my Ma.K Camel kit by Hasegawa models.

Up until the the weathering stage.

Grey Surface Primer

A great place to start is with a grey surface primer as it’s nice and neutral and we can inspect the quality of our build and see if we still need to repair it. Yes of course I took some shortcuts here for fun and only sprayed the grey on places I had repaired seam lines and re-scribed panel and detail lines.

Black Surface Primer

Next, let’s complete our surface priming and start adding some detail with a second color, whilst leaving some shiny silver plastic all in one step - I’ve gone with black this time. Doesn’t need to be this brand, any sandable lacquer-based paint should be more than fine, even Mr Color or Tamiya Flat Black will be good. I’m using black to add a shadow and mottle effect that I will then build upon in subsequent steps.

This is one of the things I do really enjoy about painting plastic models is that we can improve ourselves and our skills in increments over time. A little test and experiment each time can really build up skills and the looks we can do.

For example, I also experimented with this step on 2 of my MK44 Whiteknight space finishes a handful of models back and I’m keen to improve it a little this time again.

There were 3 main goals for me here.

The first was to add a little shadow to dull down the silver blastic yet still have it be slightly involved in the end finish. Why not? We paid for that spiffy shiny plastic and it was tough to work on, I want to get my revenge and some benefit from it for my eyes!

The second was to start a base for the mettle effect and sketch out the plan.

The third was to double-check any place that the grey primer had not coated, just to make sure I wasn’t leaving anything to embarrass me when I think it’s finished. It happens!!

Painting like this is still pretty new to me but I enjoyed the looseness and practice of adding both the mottled pattern as well as what we could call “pre-shades” along with some of the major details.

In hindsight, this model was great to go hard with this look as it’s quite large and has plenty of detail along with the cool contrast between the horizontal top deck and the verticality of the long legs. Cool!

Space White

For the theme and continuity, I wanted to do the main base color that will be visible on the underbody and side of the legs as “Space White”. It’s a classic color for Sci-Fi since the old days, particularly for these Ma.K kits way back in the early 80s when they were called SF3D. It’s simply off-white with a touch of yellow and mixed to taste.

I’ve used Mr Color again this time as I had plenty left over from my Lunadiver paint and I’d like to have continuity between them. It’s like our factory color, anti-radiation coating in the lore.

The Lunadiver Stingray

To get a good feel for how it covers and looks, I’ve started low down on the legs and kind of painted in between the black mottle patterns if that makes sense, almost like a highlight to leave plenty of shadow and depth.

Once I gained confidence, I moved up to the Ball Head and Cockpit unit, being super careful to hold the masked canopy on to protect from overspray.

Then onto the underside of the main body, experimenting with position, intensity, and thickness. This is not something I can explain precisely nor mathematically with you - sorry - but more as a next step after the previous experiments. It was exciting and fun and we can just take our time and see how it looks to us. There’s no right nor wrong here, it’s our vision and taste.

I also tried a little sneaky experiment within an experiment here on the little extra tank on the rear underside. You will see on many of my models I like to change the paintwork here as fuel tanks and the like could be easily replaced if it were a real thing, so we can experiment with different colors and looks.

The idea of a salvaged tank that had been retrieved from another Camel that perhaps had not fared so well during training and had been given a hasty re-paint appealed to me so I’ve attempted a tighter than overall resolution for the application of the space white and to push the performance limits of the paint and airbrush itself. I didn’t change my airflow but tried it in much closer and tried to get a little paint splatter and so on. It shows the amazingness of Mr Color that even when I am trying to do it wrong, it still does an amazing job. Thank you Mr Color!

By now I am finally brave enough to test it out on the fuselage’s upper surface. This is pretty new to me at this scale and style of finish so I went kind of slow. Very similar to how I would hand brush this, I start working the white paint into highlight areas between the dark splotches. Not too much at a time, not to cover the previous work but to let our underlayers guide our brushes and to further make it interesting. It may look like I am underworking it and you are correct, I only what the lighter sections as a base for now with a few highlights upon which I will block in my planned mid-layer.

You can see that for variance I am sometimes fanning the trigger whilst moving the airbrush in and out to change the spray pattern and range. Yes, we could also play with the air pressure but that’s too complex for me so I am shooting at a constant 20 PSI.

Custom Blue Greys

Let me show you my color mixes and briefly explain.

Space White to Cowling Color is my range and I’ve made 2 intermediate mixes to have 4 colors in total. I eyeballed them as customs but think about adding 25% of Cowling Color to Space White and then maybe 75%. Wait, does that math even work? The main thing is 2 attractive colors in between, and let’s call them Medium Blue Gray and Dark Blue Gray. Easy.

This gives us a simple yet beautiful color gradient and they are all in harmony with one another. No we don’t always need to do this but it’s also fun and looks great!

Medium Blue Grey

You’ll be amazed at how simplified this step is, I was, as I had already done the main creative work way back in the black and then white mottling stages here on the top deck of the fuselage. My main task here was to fill in the gaps in the mid-range and to block in the “background-color” whilst replacing the space white sections. Plus, we can gently feather in our camouflage outline along the sides. For a couple of sections, I’ve lightly penciled in some targets and sprayed close to the middle of the lines to blur them a little. (video 11)

The 2nd area for the Medium Blue Gray is along the legs and here I feel the pattern changes a little to keep the countershading effect looking correct and beautiful, keeping it on the upper facing and rear sections.

Dark Blue Grey

Once we have established those areas for the background color for the camouflage, I am coming back with the shadow component for the countershading and my thinking here is almost to use it as a counter highlight. Instead of using our brightest colors on the prominent features, I am flipping that and using my darkest. It’s almost an opposite world “modulation” if that makes sense to some of you familiar with that strategy.

It’s a beautiful color and will feel dark compared to our colors so far so use it sparingly and strategically.

I’ll admit that despite being a little nervous about being on the loose with no masking or even sketch marks on the model for this stage, it at least felt like it came out quite organically and I’m happy enough with how it looks and do hope this is a reasonable enough example for you as a Sci-Fi freehand, airbrushed camouflage pattern.

ID Band

A single yet strong ID is my plan this time. I really enjoyed how Mr Color “Brown” looks on my Lunadiver Stingray so to keep them together as part of the same attack or invasion force I've kept the same look to signify them working together in Operation Dynamo. Yes, I will write up the backstory for this and it will be in the next book “Ma.K Luna Combat”. Keep an eye on my website paintonplastic.com for news on publications.

Perhaps I don’t have the brain power and skills to technically work out how to effectively cut masks for such complex, organic shapes but that's ok because I have much more fun just drawing them on and am forever grateful to Kow Yokoyama Sensei for bestowing me the amazing mindset and simple gift of “permission”.

“Just sketch them on!” he would encourage me and then he would demo it and I would believe. Then again, he’s a design genius so he makes everything look super easy, haha.

So planning out my size and shape was pretty simple, I realized I needed a band at least 20mm wide to include my waterslide markings of choice. Then I worked the 20mm band around the model using whatever panel lines and parts I could for reference.

Then using my MK44 eyeball, I joined up the dots and sketched in the outline. I will admit, this one is perhaps the most complicated shape to date and I wanted it to appear symmetrical in a couple of key hero photo angles so there is a little voodoo at work here but not to worry at all, with my guidance and enabling, you are good to go on this too.

Plus yes, as a gag I will share, here are the 4 brushes that I fooled myself that I was going to use and here I am using the first one I picked up for the entire process. It works and we don’t need to be clever and show off. Let’s just make it look amazing!

Just to share, it took me 2 coats. One to sketch in the rough shape and keep the outline tidy and a second coat to thicken up the color to my liking whilst still allowing the mottled effects to be visible. It’s a little rough but I really like it and that’s what we want right? Happy painting feelz.

Gold Detail

Tamiya enamels, the acrylics are also more than fine!

I really wanted to add a gold detail because it’s moon equipment and I’d really like to get a bit of a NASA hommage in there. We have this display in our living, a wonderful gift from our wonderful friend Grant from May-king miniatures, a signed photo by the actual astronaut featured on the Space Shuttle photo and the LEGO version of the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander.

For fun and color joy, I’ve gone for the LEGO color and chosen Tamiya’s Titanium Gold to represent it. I have the enamel version but don’t worry, the standard series “acrylic” will be just fine too.

A quick hand brush on and then set aside to dry and we are done with paint steps and ready to get on with the Luna Combat-inspired weathering!

This is probably a great moment to mention that this Camel is going to be one of the featured models in the next release of the official English Ma.K books, Volume 2.

Closing

The Ma.K Lincoln Report Vol.1 is already out on pre-order for the physical book and I have updated the Patreon Tiers so that you can receive an automatic pre-order without paying extra for shipping plus some other new perks. Details on the Paint on Plastic Patreon main page, thank you always so very much!