\ said:
I don't know how to do it with an AB though sorry
This seems to spook nearly everybody and I don't know why! I see advice to do all sorts of things, lowering pressure, thinning paint, given in various places. I can only give my take on this as one who does a fair bit of Luftwaffe stuff and hence mottling.
Firstly we all spend a lot of time and effort establishing what pressures and thinning ratios work for our individual airbrush set ups and paints. Why on earth would you want to alter this to do a particular aspect of painting?
I am assuming that the mottle will be attempted with a double action airbrush. I simply thin my paint and set up my airbrush exactly as I would for any other painting. I then apply the mottle, controlling the paint with the airbrush trigger, that's what it is for. I get in really close and build up the mottle slowly. It is easy enough to 'add' to an area, much harder to take away.
Not all mottling was equal! You need to check references. There were differences in style from factory to factory. Modifications made post production were as various and numerous as the men who were applying them.
As far as the size of the mottling or length of lines or streaks go I try to imagine how a man with a spray gun would work. He couldn't spray a continuous line,in one go, across the entire fin of a typical fighter for example. He would have to move, unless he had arms like an Orang-Utan!
All these are based on photographs of the original aircraft.
Finally, not strictly a mottle but a loose squiggle pattern.
It is clear how very different all the patterns we file under 'mottle' really are. All this variety is one of the things that attracted me to the Luftwaffe in the first place.
Cheers
Steve
