I recently build the Airfix 1/72 Boulton Paul Defiant Mk.I, its a nice cheap kit of a lesser known “Battle of Britain” warrior. It has nice detail and fits togheter well wich made it fun to build. I am pretty happy how it turned out.
I started with the fusalage interior and the cockpit, assembled all the small parts like seat, instrumentpanel and such. Altough most of it will be hidden in the small cockpit, i wanted to make the cockpit a bit more intresting and i added some seatbelts made of masking tape. I airbrushed everything in the base color and picked out the details with a paint brush. After finishing painting i gave everything a light drybrush. This would make the details stand out a bit more. I placed the instrument panel decal wich has some nice instrument dails. I airbrushed a glosscoat to seal all the paint work. To pic out some more details in the cockpit i applied some washes. After giving the weathering some time to dry it was airbrused with a flatcoat to give it a nice dull appearance.
The finished cockpit sidewalls 
Finished seat and cockpit rear 
Finished instrumentpanel 
All cockpit parts glued in place
After finishing the cockpit it was time to assemble the kit. I found the overal fit was verry good and i hardly needed any filler after finishing assembly. It was to mask off the canopy and glue it in place. now everything is ready for a primer coat and painting.
Fusalage and winds assembled 
Cockpit glued in place and masked
After a black primer coat it was time for painting. I sprayed the underside with Mr Hobby H31 White Green. Next up the topside camoflage, i painted the topside two tone camoflage with Mr Hobby H72 Dark Earth and H320 Dark Green. I applied some highlights to the camoflage color to make the paint scheme a bit more intresting i add some white to the basemix and sprayed that in the centers of the camoflage sections and created some highlights this way.
Bottom side painted with H31 White Green 
first camoflage color painted with H72 Dark Earth 
Second camoflage color painted with H320 Dark Green
An experiment to add some more intrest to the paint scheme i masked off the ribs of the control surfaces and sprayed a light coat of Tamiya X-19 smoke. This is a transparent grey paint wich works like a filter. The idea behind this technic is to give some tonal variation to the control surfaces.
Wing control surfaces masked 
Tail control surfaces masked off. 
After painting and unmasking 
After painting and unmasking
Now that all the painting is finished i could seal everything with a glosscoat of Mr. Color GX100. After letting the glosscoat dry i could start with the decals. The decals looked really nice and settled down perfectly with some Microscale set and sol. After that the decals dried properly i sealed them with a second glosscoat. Now i could start with weathering.
Glosscoat is on. 
Decal time 
Decal time 
Decals are on
To bring out some more of the details i applied a black Tamiya panelline wash. The exhausts where painted with buffable Mr Color MC212 Dark Iron. After letting the paint has dry i buffed the exhaust up with a cotton bud and followed with some rust weathering powders to creat a worn effect. I wanted to add some dirt to the walkways. To achieve this i brushed on some streaking effects and toned them down a bit by drybrushing the area. In the end it looks like there is some settled dust. As a final step i added some fuel and oil stains with Ammo Mig streaking effects.
Applying Tamiya Black panelliner 
Exhausts painted 
weatherd with rust pigments 
Some fluied streaking 
Some dirt on the wing 
Some more fluied streaks
This is how my finished Airfix 1/72 Boulton Paul Defiant Mk.I looks. If you have any questions or remarks leave a comment at the bottom or send me a message true the contact form. Happy modeling!
