Painting the Hull and Flight Deck

 After looking over some drawings and photos I discovered that I had omitted the 5" gun mount on the aft starboard side. This is also omitted in the kit. So I used some more styrene sheet and angle to make the gun tub and mount for the gun director. Glad this happened before the paint was on! For paint I used Tamya Dark Ghost Gray from a spray can. Model Master Dark Ghost Gray is a pretty good match of Haze Gray. Not so with Tamya. It dried to a very pretty light blue color. Not acceptable. So I repainted the hull and flight deck MM Light Sea Gray (spray can). On CVS carriers the flight deck appears to be the same color as the hull except for the angle deck. I've looked at photos of CVA carriers and they show a more uniform dark gray color over the entire flight deck. I don't know the reason for this difference. After the paint dried I masked off the angle deck landing area with Tamya tape and painted it MM Euro 1 Gray. Which is a nice dark gray that will also take weathering well. Also brushed on the same dark gray on the cat walks. Masked off the waterline and painted the boot topping Testors Flat Black.

The stripes for the angled section of the flight deck are incorrect for the period I'm modeling so I opted not to use them. Also I prefer to paint long straight lines when I can since decals are really difficult to keep straight. Using the drawing I have I measured the angled deck off and masked the striping with tamya masking tape and painted the lines with MM Light Gray. I use this rather then white because white looks too bright in scale. Painted the catapults the same way with MM Euro 1Gray.  After the paint dried weathering was applied using pastels, mostly black. A little brown was added in some places. The elevators get dirtier then the rest of the deck so I weathered them heavier. Decals were applied after a coat of clear gloss was sprayed on. I had to use numbers from my spares box and a few other non-kit decals. Sprayed the whole thing with clear flat.