The Bishkek 2nd Valkyrie, Part 3: Freaking out

So I have passed a few super frustrating days with the Valk. Here's the lowdown on inching my way forward with this great model.

In the FW modeling book they show this cool plane with the wing markings:

I know there is a decal for sale, but painting seems easier. So I cut out the template and drew it on the wing with pencil.

But I should have known it was going to be trouble. I could not for the life of me decide what color to paint this wing. I put all my paintpots on it to try, concluding that orange would look best. But what pilot wants to put orange on his wing? So I decided on brown..

Brown? is the first response of the wife...and that is never good. She has an excellent eye for estethics. I doggedly kept painting until it looked clean. I even got a nice india ink pen....

to sharpen up the corners. In the end I painted this thing so big, I covered up all the camo work!

I looked at it again and realized more was wrong but I didn't know what. So I figured, I'm going to weather it a bit with a stipple brush and some desert yellow, peeking through the top layer. That looked like this

At that point I had to constrain myself from crushing this plane under my foot. Of this whole wing thing, nothing was working out. Realize I worked my behind off to make the camo look as good as I can get it, and then I am going to mess it up with this. And there is no way back, except start all over. So I repainted the whole wing brown again, getting rid of all the weathering.