Blood Red Skies - Painting The Yak-1 Squadron

Painting the Yak - 1 

Miniature Quality

I'll be leaving the rules and components for possibly another time, but I want to mention the miniatures. So far I'd only seen these online in battle reports or unboxing videos, so I'd never seen them in the flesh, so to speak. These are 1/200th scale. which doesn't mean a great deal to me, but I was surprised how big the miniature were, I was expecting them to be smaller aircraft. but they are sizeable, this should make painting them easier. 

When they arrived in the post, the box was quite a bit mangled and squashed, so I was worried, however apart from a few popped out tokens the contents were fine. 

Choosing the Colours

A quick internet Google search offered me many options for great colour scheme for the Yak-1, and it wasn't easy, it was a toss up between the light grey/green and the winter white with red. In the end I went for the white. 

 

Base Colours

The Yak-1 arrived as dark green plastic, so a quick spray paint of white. 

Next I did the shading by using the citadel paint Dawnstone (or Codex Grey for the old schoolers) Lining in the detail with slightly watered down paint. I normally use Citadel paints so I'll be referring to them.

Just bringing out the details. 

I then started on the red bits and the cockpit. I always feel dangerous painting red over white. I started with a dark red (Khorne red) over the back of the tail and the nose spinner. 

Then went over the cockpit windows with a light blue (Lothern Blue) with a little wash of dark blue (Drakenhof nightshade), once this has dried, highlighted back up to light blue. 

I then focused on the engines in black and highlighted with the grey again.

I then went over the cockpit and brought up the white frames and the gave the glass a gloss varnish. 

The red areas were taken up to a more vibrant red to contrast with the white more. 

 and to finish it of a pure white edge highlight was applied to the model. 

The finished Yak 1 squadron flying over a calm sea

The Squadron Leader

This cover was my inspiration for the squadron leader. I know its not a Yak-1 (It's a Mig 3) but I really like the colours. I did change a few things, such as I didn't add the black lightening bolt and added more red to the tail to keep in line with the rest of the squadron. 

Just need to add the decals.

Stickers

In the beginning when I found out that stickers would be included for use in the squadron boxes, I thought it'd be a good idea, a nice fast way to get the aircraft ready for combat and I do still agree with this. However the colour scheme I've chosen means that the Soviet star is only placed on the fuselage and the stickers are far too big to be used for this purpose. So I'll have to wait and order some aircraft decals. 


I did have a few decals spare from the T34-85 kit from Warlord games, so I used the star to get a good idea how these finished planes will look like. I'm very happy as to how these turned out.

Soviet Star Decal added. 

Now just need to do the rest........