Thanks guys! I'm really enjoying this build. It's a mix of familiar and strange. It's a Dora, which I've done many but it's a D-13, which makes it unique and different in many ways. The 190D has always been a favorite of mine, even in childhood, so I feel especially motivated to do my best even when going through (essentially) the same cockpit and engine stuff 4-5 times now.
The wheels have been painted. No, they do not match! Photographs of Yellow 10 at capture clearly show that the plane had both the smooth and treaded tires. I used one of the kit wheels for the smooth version and a Barracuda resin wheel for the treaded one. Hub detail is a slightly different but close enough not to stand out. As for painting, I like to use a dark brown on the rubber tires. Mostly to contrast with the black metal wheel discs but I guess real rubber can have that tinge of brown to it. I've lightened the wear surfaces with a tan color but I've always been dissatisfied with the paint effects up to this point... it's just too smooth and airbrush-like.
On the last few builds, I've been developing a technique to impart some smaller, more hard-edged staining to the tires. I'm sure other people have done this but I've never seen it described or named. So I'm gonna pretend I invented it and call it "pastel staining". What I'm doing is using the propensity for a liquid pastel wash to spread out and create tide stains on matte surfaces. Using a light-colored, tannish wash that I've mixed up from pastel chalks, I put small dots of the wash along the center of the tires. Capillary action draws out the dot of fluid onto a bigger area, dragging with it the fine chalk dust and creating irregular tide marks.
Using a slightly dampened piece of paper towel, the stained areas are carefully wiped off, usually from side to side perpendicular to how the tire rolls to transition the stains from the contact area onto the tire sidewalls. The trick here is to use a light stroke to smooth and smear the wash without completely removing it.
The pattern is repeated until I've achieved a layered set of random stains that looks semi-convincing.
To seal the deal, I spray a light coat of clear matte (Model Master Acryl Clear Flat), making sure the matte goes on "dry".
