On with the ‘black’…
I have some Polyscale NATO Gray paint that is pretty much like NATO Black in the Tamiya range and that is used here for the base colour. You’ve probably heard that using straight Black is too stark and dark and I agree so a dark grey gives a good scale colour effect. As you can see in these three pics, the grey is still pretty dark. The second stage is to add a couple of drops of white to the base colour mix and spay thinly in a random squiggle pattern. This has the effect of breaking up the uniform, plain 2-D look of the base colour and add some depth. These first two stages are important in my view and weathering also starts now by masking some of the panel leading edges with low-tack self-adhesive paper notelets. The same mix being applied a little thicker to these areas. Some streaking is also done in the same way at the same time at this stage.
That will probably do as far as the main underside paint goes for now – more to do later, especially on the weathering side, but I want to start getting the top colour pattern on and I’ll be back soon with that! You may spot in the next image the angle of the tailplane control surfaces with the training edge tilted upwards – very unusual this but the Canberra had this as a bit of a feature when the aircraft had been at rest for some time. 