Audi R8--Photoetch Thoughts

From last time--still working (and not making quick progress as always!) on a Revell Audi R8.  Supposed to be a group project with a young nephew, but he's off playing video games, so I am building it myself.  Maybe he'll want the finished model as a gift?

A few years ago I would have just started building, but my standards have gotten (much!) higher....and now I almost dread each step, because I can't just build, I have to be obsessive!

Let's take the Audi hood Logo for instance!  On the box art, the master modeler (not me!) didn't to paint the Audi logo at all.  That's not right!  For me, I see that and think "time for photoetch!"  From past builds, a real metal logo will look a lot better than any amount of 00001 brushing I can do or whatever decal I can find.  So to buy this one logo, I got in touch with Stradasports and they sold me the entire photoetch rig for this kit. Made by "KA models" it has everything--including a serious series of "real" metal grills that you can up build bit by bit.  I will skip the grills and use the kit plastic.  The former will take too much time and I have keep moving!  I am not that obsessive--not yet!

So what's the project's progress so far after 6 weeks?  Not much!  I have painted the aluminum parts using Testors classic black shot through an airbrush, followed by a 1:1 mix of chrome and aluminum paints from Alclad2 

And then I painted up the semi gloss black parts using the "Donn Yost" mix: 1 bottle of Testors flat black enamel mixed with 1/2 bottle of cheap lacquer thinner, then shot through a decent airbrush. Everything was pretty carefully prepped, cleaned, and primed first.

So I'm making some progress, just not a lot.  I don't know; there seems to be a lot of other things to do these days!  But I am hanging in there and it's raining out so I might work a bit more on this today…..  Maybe.