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Not all aircraft models should look like they have been in the war, some should look brand new, and some should look like they have been sitting around the airfield for years.  We'll concentrate on the older, used models in this section...

The first element you have to take into account is rust.  Rust effects can be created by using carefully blended brown and orange paint, with cinnamon and paprika added. Sounds like a recipe?  It is.  Real rust flakes and crumbles as oxidation progresses.  It is easy to recreate those textures by blending the spices within a paint mixture, and applying it to the center of the rusty area.  You can also recreate flaking by adding paint chips you create by painting a slick surface such as a margarine container cover; this procedure is quite tricky, and we recommend you use the same paint you used for the rust mixture, prior to adding spices.

Frost is also quite difficult to create, but we have been successful using a mixture of chalk, ashes and clear coat.  Adding a bit of sprayed on flat white paint around the edges of the more concentrated areas, preferably with an airbrush will yield extremely convincing results; if you do not have an airbrush, it may be very difficult to create this effect, but some have achieved it by lightly touching the tip of a regular brush so that only the smallest specks appear. Try and observe the formation of any of these elements in real life situations before you apply them to your kit.

It's also interesting to add mud on the tires of your plane. Mud can effectively be created using clear coat and various combinations of cocoa (for reddish brown mud), curry (for yellow mud), mixed Italian spices (for grass and twigs) and ashes for adding darkness to the mixture.  For winter scenes, we suggest you add the aforementioned frost mixture over the mud.

Once you've finished mucking up your model,  you may want to add some clear coat acrylic to protect everything.  Use a non gloss clear acrylic such as the ones manufactured by Krylon.  These are commonly called setting sprays, and will yield the best results.  In closing, we would like to add that all of these techniques represent the techniques of individuals obsessed with recreating miniature scenes that would be suitable for motion pictures, and these were all the results of years of trial and error.  We encourage you to try different things if you are so inclined, or just leave your model into it's cleanest state for display.  The choice is yours.

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