Painting an old school instrument panel is Officially Not Fun

I've had some other stuff going on in my life this week (pfft, life, getting in the way of important modelling time...) but I did manage to snatch a quick hour to paint the instrument panel of my current Mustang project.

It's 1/32 scale, so it's pretty much the most forgiving, largest scale you can work with (apart from 1/24 which is just a bit too big for my display space once completed). But even then, it is brutal on the eyes and induces shakiness in the hands when you're trying to paint detail this fine.

Remember, each of those squares on the cutting mat is 1 centimeter square.

All I can offer in the way of advice is try to breathe slowly, wick off a little of the dot of paint on your 000 paintbrush each time you top up the paint on the tip, and have a good source of light!

You want more advice? Buy a more modern kit which offers instrument decals or celluloid film mounted behind the drilled-out fascia of the instrument panel. Painting old-school moulded instruments is a bitch.

That said, I'm happy with the end result. I'm looking forward to seeing this installed in the fuselage soon and getting a feel for how the entire cockpit will look.

Cheers,

Dave